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SILENT TIMES. 

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GLIMPSES THROUGH 
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THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

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THE 



BUILDING OF CHARACTER 



BY 



J. R. MILLER, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF "SILENT TIMES," "MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE, 
"THE EVERY DAY OF LIFE,'' "GLIMPSES 
THROUGH LIFE'S WINDOWS." ETC. 



" Build it well, whate'er you do ; 
Build it straight, and strong, and true ; 
Build it clear, and high, and broad : 
Build it for the eve of God." 




«.*7? -~Z~ 



V 



NEW YORK: 46 East 14TH Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

BOSTON : 100 Purchase Street 






Copyright, 1894, 

BY 

Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. 



j <t 



*--*/* 



C. J. PETERS & SON, 

TYPE-SETTERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, 

145 HIGH STREET, BOSTON, 



Nothing else we can do or make in this world 
is so important as that which we build along the 
years in ourselves. What we are at the end is a 
great deal truer test of living than what we have 
or what we have done. 

It is hoped that these chapters may give helpful 
suggestions to thoughtful readers toward the at- 
taining of the things in life which are more excel- 
lent. The author is exceedingly grateful to the 
many who have written him of the strength, com- 
fort, encouragement, guidance, or inspiration re- 
ceived from his former books, and sends out this 
new volume in the hope "that it, too, may have a 

ministry of helpfulness. 

J. R. M. 
Philadelphia. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter 

I. The Building of Character . . 

II. Our Undiscovered Faults . . 

III. Life's Second Chance .... 

IV. Getting help from Criticism . 
V. Fellow-workers with God . . 

VI. Our Debt to Others .... 

VII. The Responsibility of Greatness 

VIII. The Ability of Faith .... 

IX. Sources of Strength .... 

X. The Blessing of Weakness . . 

XI. Living Victoriously 

XII. Interpreters for God .... 

XIII. Some Secrets of a Beautiful Life 

XIV. Helping by Prater 

XV. The Cost of Praying .... 

XVI. Making Friendship Hard . . . 

XVII. "Give Ye Them to Eat' 1 . . . 

XVIII. On Judging Others 

XIX. Christ's Withheld Lessons . . 

XX. For the Days of Darkness . . 

XXI. Hidden Words in the Bible . . 

XXII. Getting the Joy of Christ . . 

XXIII. The Need of the Afterlook 



Page 

I 

13 
25 

37 

50 
62 

74 

86 

98 

no 

120 

135 

147 
158 
168 
179 
192 
202 
217 
228 

239 
253 
264 



" By trifles in our common ways, 

Our characters are slowly piled , 

We lose not all our yesterdays ; 

The man has something of the child. 
Part of the past to all the present cleaves, 
As the rose-odors linger in the fading leaves. 

In ceaseless toil, from year to year, 
Working with loath or willing hands, 
Stone upon stone we shape and rear, 
Till the completed fabric stands. 
And, when the last hush hath all labor, stilled, 
The searching fire will try what we have striven to build," 



THE 



BUILDING OF CHARACTER 



CHAPTER I. 

THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

" Souls are built as temples are, — 
Here a carving rich and quaint, 
There the image of a saint ; 
Here a deep-hued pane to tell 
Sacred truth or miracle. 
Every little helps the much ; 
Every careful, careless touch 
Adds a charm or leaves a scar." 

The building of character is the most im- 
portant business of life. It matters little 
what works a man may leave in the world ; 
his real success is measured by what he has 
wrought along the years in his own being. 

True character must be built after divine 
patterns. Every man's life is a plan of God. 



2 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

There is a divine purpose concerning it which 
it should realize. In the Scriptures we find 
the patterns for all the parts of the charac- 
ter, not only for its great and prominent ele- 
ments, but also for its most minute features, — 
the delicate lines and shadings of its ornamen- 
tation. The commandments, the beatitudes, 
all Christ's precepts, the ethical teachings of 
the apostles, all show us the patterns after 
which we are to fashion our character. 

It is a great thing for us to have a lofty- 
thought of life, and ever to seek to reach it. 
Said Michael Angelo : " Nothing makes the 
soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to 
create something perfect ; for God is perfec- 
tion, and whosoever strives for it, strives for 
something that is godlike." The seeking it- 
self makes us nobler, holier, purer, stronger. 
We grow ever toward that for which we long. 
Many searches are unrewarded. Men seek for 
gold, and do not find it. They strive after 
honor, and it eludes them. They try to attain 
happiness, but the vision ever recedes as they 
press toward it. The quest for true noble- 



THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 3 

ness is one that is rewarded. " Blessed are 
they which do hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness ; for they shall be filled," is our 
Lord's own word. Longing for spiritual good 
shall never be in vain. 

" The thing we long for, that we are 
For one transcendent moment ; " 

and unceasing longing, with earnest reaching 
after the good, little by little lifts the life into 
the permanent realization of that which is 
thus persistently sought. 

There are certain things essential in all 
building. Every structure requires a good 
foundation. Without this it never can rise 
into real strength and grandeur. The most 
beautiful building reared on sand is insecure 
and must fall. There is only one foundation 
for Christian character. We must build on 
the rock ; that is, we must have, as the basis 
of our character, great, eternal principles. 

One of these principles is truth. Ruskin 
tells us that in a famous Italian cathedral 
there are a number of colossal figures high 



4 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

up among the heavy timbers that support the 
roof. From the pavement, these statues have 
the appearance of great beauty. Curious to 
examine them, Ruskin says he climbed one 
day to the roof, and stood close beside them. 
Bitter was his disappointment to find that only 
the parts of the figures which could be seen 
from the pavement were carefully finished. 
The hidden side was rough and undressed. 

It is not enough to make our lives true 
only so far as men can see them. We have 
but scorn for men who profess truth, and then 
in their secret life reveal falsehood, deception, 
insincerity. There must be truth through and 
through in the really noble and worthy build- 
ing. A little flaw, made by a. bubble of air 
in the casting, has been the cause of the 
breaking of the great beam years afterward, 
and the falling of the immense bridge whose 
weight rested upon it. Truth must be in the 
character, — absolute truth. The least false- 
hood mars the beauty of the life. 

Another of these essential principles is 
purity. " Whatsoever things are pure," says 



THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 5 

the apostle in the same breath with what- 
soever things are true, and just, and honor- 
able. It is a canon of art, that an artist who 
lives badly never can paint a good picture ; 
nor can a man who lives badly ever build up 
a really beautiful character. Only he who 
has a pure heart can see God, to know what 
life's ideal is. Only he whose hands are clean 
can build after the perfect pattern. One who 
works with stained fingers leaves spots of 
marring and blemish on whatever he touches. 
Purity is an essential fundamental principle 
in the perfect character. 

Love is another quality which must be 
wrought into this foundation. Love is the 
reverse of selfishness. It is the holding of all 
the life as Christ's, to be used to bless others. 
"So long as I have been here," said President 
Lincoln, after his second election, " I have not 
willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom." 
That is one phase of love, — never needlessly 
to give pain or do hurt to a fellow r -being. The 
other part is the positive, — to live to do the 
greatest good to every other being whenever 
opportunity offers, 



6 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

" Do any hearts beat faster, 
Do any faces brighten, 
To hear your footsteps on the stair, 
To meet you, greet you, anywhere ? 
Are you so like your Master, 
Dark shadows to enlighten? 
Are any happier to-day 
Through words they have heard you say? 

Life were not worth the living 

If no one were the better 
For having met you on the way, 
And known the sunshine of your stay." 

Truth, purity, love, — these are examples of 
the immutable principles which must be built 
into the foundation of the temple of charac- 
ter. We never can have a noble structure 
without a strong and secure foundation. 

On the foundation thus laid the character 
must be built. No magnificent building ever 
grew up by miracle. Stone by stone it rose, 
each block laid in its place by toil and effort. 
" You cannot dream yourself into a character," 
says a writer ; " you must hammer and forge 
yourself one." Even with the best founda- 




THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 7 

tion there must be faithful, patient building 
unto the end. 

Then each one must build his own charac- 
ter. No one can do it for him. No one but 
yourself can make your life beautiful. No 
one can be true, pure, honorable, and loving 
for you. A mother's prayers and teachings 
cannot give you strength of soul and grandeur 
of spirit. We are taught to edify one another, 
and we do, indeed, help to build up each other's 
life-temple. Consciously or unconsciously, we 
are continually leaving touches on the souls 
of others, — touches of beauty or of marring. 
In every book we read the author lays some- 
thing new on the wall of our life. Every 
hour's companionship with another gives either 
a touch of beauty, or a stain to our spirit. 
Every song that is sung in our ear enters into 
our heart and becomes part of our being. 
Even the natural scenery amid which we dwell 
leaves its impression upon us. Thus others, 
thus all things about us, do indeed have their 
place as builders of our character. 

But we are ourselves the real builders. 



8 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Others may lift the blocks into place, but we 
must lay them on the wall. Our own hands 
give the touches of beauty or of blemish, 
whatever hands of others hold the brushes or 
mix the colors for us. If the building is 
marred or unsightly when it is finished, we 
cannot say it was some other one's fault. 
Others may have sinned, and the inheritance 
of the sin is yours. Others may have sorely 
wronged you, and the hurt yet stays in your 
life. You never can be the same in this 
world that you might have been but for the 
wounding. You are not responsible for these 
marrings of your character which were wrought 
by others' hands. Still you are the builder, — 
you and God. 

" We are builders, and each one 
Should cut and carve as best he can; 
Every life is but a stone, 
Every one shall hew his own, 
Make or mar, shall every man." 

Even the broken fragments of what seems 
a ruin you can take, and with them, through 



THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 9 

God's grace, you can make a noble fabric. It 
is strange how many of earth's most beautiful 
lives have grown up out of what seemed de- 
feat and failure. Indeed, God seems to love to 
build spiritual loveliness out of the castaway 
fragments of lives, even out of sin's debris. 
In a great cathedral there is said to be a win- 
dow, made by an apprentice out of the bits 
of stained glass that were thrown away as 
refuse and worthless waste when the other 
windows were made, and this is the most beau- 
tiful window of all. You can build a noble 
character for yourself, in spite of all the hurts 
and injuries done to you, wittingly or unwit- 
tingly, by others, with the fragments of the 
broken hopes and joys and the lost oppor- 
tunities that lie strewn about your feet. No 
others by their worst work of hurt or marring 
can prevent your building a beautiful charac- 
ter for yourself. 

When the ancient temple of Solomon was 
reared, the whole world was sought through, 
and its most costly and beautiful things were 
gathered and put into the sacred house. We 



IO THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

should search everywhere for whatsoever things 
are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatso- 
ever things are pure, to build into our life. 
All that we can learn from books, from music, 
from art, from friends ; all that we can gather 
from the Bible and receive from the hand of 
Christ himself, we should take and build into 
our character to make it worthy. But in order 
to discover the things that are lovely we must 
have the loveliness in our own soul. " Though 
we travel the world over to find the beauti- 
ful/' says one, "we must carry it in our own 
heart, or, go where we may, we shall find it 
not." Only a pure, true, loving heart can dis- 
cover the things that are true, pure, and lov- 
ing to build in the character. We must have 
Christ in us, and then we shall find Christly 
things everywhere, and gather them into our 
own life. 

There are some people who, in the discour- 
agement of defeat and failure, feel that it is 
then too late for them to make their character 
beautiful. They have lost their last oppor- 
tunity, it seems to them. But this is never 



THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. II 

true in this world in which Christ died. A 
poet tells of walking in his garden and seeing 
a birds' nest lying on the ground. The storm 
had swept through the tree and ruined the 
nest. While he mused sadly over the wreck 
of the birds' home, he looked up, and there 
he saw them building a new one amid the 
branches. The birds teach us immortals a 
lesson. Though all seems lost, let us not sit 
down and weep in despair, but let us arise 
and begin to build again. No one can undo 
a wrong past. No one can repair the ruins 
of years that are gone. We cannot live our 
life over again. But, at our Father's feet, we 
can begin anew as little children, and make 
all our life new. 

" Oh, to go back across the years long vanished, 

To have the words unsaid, the deeds undone, 
The errors cancelled, the deep shadows banished, 

In the glad sense of a new world begun : 
To be a little child, whose page of story 

Is yet undimmed, unblotted by a stain, 
And in the sunrise of primeval glory 

To know that life has had its start again! 



12 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

I may go back across the years long vanished ; 

I may resume my childhood, Lord, in thee, 
When in the shadow of thy cross are banished 

All other shadows that encompass me ; 
And o'er the road that now is dark and dreary, 

This soul, made buoyant by the strength of rest, 
Shall walk untired, shall run and not be weary, 

To bear the blessing that has made it blest." 



CHAPTER II. 

OUR UNDISCOVERED FAULTS. 

"A friend who holds a mirror to my face, 
And, hiding none, is not afraid to trace 
My faults, my smallest blemishes, within ; 
Who friendly warns, reproves me if I sin — 
Although it seems not so, he is my friend. 

But he who, ever flattering, gives me praise, 
Who ne'er rebukes nor censures, nor delays 
To come with eagerness and grasp my hand, 
And pardon me, ere pardon I demand — 
He is my enemy, although he seem my friend." 

We may as well confess that it is not pleas- 
ant to be told of our faults. Poets and other 
writers tell us that he is our truest friend 
who does not shrink from holding the mirror 
to our face. Nevertheless, we do not like it. 
As a rule, he who proves such a friend to 
another finds himself a sinecure in his friend- 
ship thereafter. Even that may not be too 
great a price to pay, however, for the privi- 
lege of doing for one we love a service which 

13 



14 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

shall take from his life a sad blemish or a 
serious flaw. 

No doubt there are faults in us which we 
ourselves do not see. Our eyes are so set 
in our heads that they look out and not in. 
It is easier, therefore, for us to detect spots 
in others than in ourselves. So it comes that 
in most of us there are blemishes of which 
we are altogether unaware. The Bible speaks 
of sins of ignorance. So there are sins which 
we commit of which we are not conscious. 
In one of the Psalms there is a prayer to be 
cleansed, or cleared from, secret or hidden 
faults. So we have faults which are not seen 
by ourselves. 

Then we all have in us many things, both 
good and bad, which our fellow-men cannot 
see, but of which we ourselves are aware. 
We cannot reveal ourselves perfectly, even to 
our own bosom companions. With no inten- 
tion to hide anything, even desiring to live 
a perfectly open life, there will yet be many 
things in the inner depths of our being which 
our nearest friends cannot discover. No one 



OUR UNDISCOVERED FAULTS. 1 5 

but ourselves knows the motives that actuate 
us. Sometimes neighbors praise our good 
deed when we know well that the good was 
blurred by a self-seeking intent. Or others 
may criticise something we do, charging us 
with a wrong spirit, when we know in our 
heart that it was true love that prompted it. 

We are both better and worse than others 
think us to be. The best things in good 
lives do not flash their beauty before human 
eyes. None of us can ever show to others 
all in us that is worthy. There are count- 
less stars in the depths of the sky which no 
human eye ever sees. Human lives are deeper 
than the heavens in which the stars are set ; 
and in the depths even of the most common- 
place soul there are more splendors unrevealed 
to human gaze than are revealed. Who is 
there that says all the truth he tries to say, 
when he attempts to speak of or for his Mas- 
ter ? What singer ever gets into his song all 
the music that is in his soul when he sings? 
What painter ever transfers to his canvas all 
the loveliness of the vision which fills his 



1 6 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

heart? What Christian ever lives out all the 
loyalty to Christ, all the purity and holiness, 
all the gentleness and sweetness, all the un- 
selfishness and helpfulness, all the grace and 
beauty, he longs to show in his life ? Even 
in those who fail and fall in defeat, and whose 
lives are little but shame and sin, there are 
yet gleams of beauty, like the shattered frag- 
ments of a once very noble ideal. We do 
not know what strivings, what penitences, 
what efforts to do better, what tears of sor- 
row, what hungerings after God and heaven, 
there are in the heart even of the depraved, 
in whom the world, even nearest friends, see 
nothing beautiful. No doubt in every life 
there is good which human eyes cannot see. 

But there is evil, also, which our friends 
cannot detect, — things no one suspects, but of 
which we ourselves are painfully aware. Many 
a man goes out in the morning to be loved 
and welcomed by his friends, and praised and 
honored by the world, yet carrying in his own 
breast the memory of some deed of sin or 
shame committed in secret the night before. 



OUR UNDISCOVERED FAULTS. iy 

" If people only knew me," he says, " as I 
know myself to-day, they would scorn me in- 
stead of trusting me and honoring me." All 
of us are conscious of miserable things hid- 
den within us, — secret habits wrought into 
fixed life, the play of unholy thoughts and 
feelings, the rising up of ugly passions and 
tempers, the movements of pride, vanity, self- 
conceit, envy, jealousy, doubt, which do not re- 
veal themselves to any eye without. There are 
evils in every one of which the person himself 
knows, but which others do not even suspect. 

" For no men or women that live to-day, 
Be they as good or as bad as they may, 
Even would dare to leave 
In faintest pencil or boldest ink 
All that they truly and really think, 
What they have said or what they have done, 
What they have lived, and what they have felt, 
Under the stars or under the sun." 

But there also are faults, unlovely things 
and sins in our hearts, of which we ourselves 
are unaware. There is an eye that pierces 



1 8 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

deeper than our own into our souls. In one 
place St. Paul says, " I know nothing against 
myself: yet am I not hereby justified; but 
he that judgeth me is the Lord." It is not 
enough to be innocent of conscious trans- 
gression ; there are sins of ignorance. Only 
God sees us through and through. We must 
live for his inspection and approval. 

We cannot see our own faults even as our 
neighbors see them. The Pharisee in his 
prayer, which really was not a prayer at all, 
spoke much of other people's sins, but saw 
none in himself. We are all much like him. 
We are prejudiced in our own favor. We are 
very charitable and tolerant toward our own 
shortcomings. We make all manner of allow- 
ance for our own faults, and are wonderfully 
patient with our own infirmities. We see our 
good things magnified, and our blemishes in 
a light that makes them seem almost virtues. 
So true is this, that if we were to meet 
ourself some day on the street, the self God 
sees, even the self our neighbor sees, we 
probably should not recognize it as really our- 



OUR UNDISCOVERED FAULTS. 1 9 

self. Our own judgment of our life is not 
conclusive. There is a self we do not see. 

Then we cannot see into the future, to know 
whither the subtle tendencies of our life are 
leading us. We do many things which to our 
eyes appear innocent and harmless, but which 
have in them a hidden evil we cannot see. We 
indulge ourselves in many things which to us 
do not appear sinful, but which leave on our 
soul a touch of blight, a soiling of purity, of 
which we do not dream. We permit ourselves 
many little habits in which we see no danger, 
but which are silently entwining their invisible 
threads into a cable, which some day shall 
bind us hand and foot. We spare ourselves 
self-denials and sacrifices, thinking there is no 
reason why we should make them, unaware 
that we are lowering our standard of living, 
and permitting the subtle beginnings of self- 
indulgence to creep into our heart. 

There is another class of hidden faults. Sin 
is deceitful. No doubt there are many things 
in most of us, — ways of living, traits of char- 
acter, qualities of disposition, — which we con- 



20 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

sider, perhaps, among our strong points, or at 
least fair and commendable things in us, which 
in God's eye are not only flaws and blemishes, 
but sins. Good and evil in certain qualities 
do not lie very far apart. It is quite easy 
for devotion to principle to shade off into 
obstinacy. It is easy for self-respect, con- 
sciousness of ability, to pass over into miser- 
able self-conceit. It is easy for a man to make 
himself believe that he is cherishing justifi- 
able anger, when the truth is, he is only giving 
way to very bad temper. It is easy to let 
gentleness become weakness, and tolerance 
toward sinners tolerance toward sin. It is 
easy for us to become very selfish in many 
phases of our conduct, while in general we 
are really quite unselfish. For example: A 
man may be giving his life to the good of 
his fellows in the larger sense, while in his 
own home he is utterly regardless of the 
comfort and convenience of those nearest 
to him. Without, he is polite, thoughtful, 
kindly ; within, he cares not how much trouble 
he causes, exacting and demanding attention 



OUR UNDISCOVERED FAULTS, 21 

and service, and playing the petty tyrant in- 
stead of the large-hearted, generous Christian. 
Who of us does not have little or greater 
secret blemishes lying alongside his most shin- 
ing virtues ? We do not see them in ourselves. 
We see the faults cropping out in our neigh- 
bor, and we say, " What a pity so fine a char- 
acter is so marred! " And our neighbor looks 
at us and says, "What a pity that with so 
much that is good, he has so many marring 
faults ! " Sin is deceitful. 

The substance of all that has been said is, 
that besides the faults our neighbors see in 
us, besides those our closest friends see, be- 
sides those of which we ourselves are aware, 
all of us have undiscovered errors in our life, 
hidden, secret faults, of which only God 
knows. 

If we are living truly, we want to find every 
flaw or blemish there is in us, of whatever 
kind. He is a coward who shrinks from the 
discovery of his own faults. We should be 
glad always to learn of any hidden unloveli- 
ness in ourselves. Some one says, "Count 



22 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

yourself richer that day you discover a new 
fault in yourself — not richer because it is 
there, but richer because it is no longer a 
hidden fault ; and if you have not yet found 
all your faults, pray to have them revealed to 
you, even if the revelation must come in a 
way that hurts your pride." 

It is dangerous to allow any fault, however 
small, to stay in our life ; but hidden faults 
are even more perilous than those of which 
we are aware. They are enemies concealed, 
traitors in the camp, unrecognized, passing 
for friends. No good, true, and brave man 
will allow a discovered sin or fault to stay 
unchallenged in his life ; but an undiscovered 
sin lurks and nests in a man's heart, and 
breeds its deadly evil in his very soul. Before 
he is aware of its presence, it may eat out 
the heart of his manhood, and poison the 
very springs of his being. 

Hidden faults, remaining undiscovered and 
uncured in us, will hinder our spiritual growth, 
and we shall not know the reason for our moral 
weakness, or lack of power. They will also 



OUR UNDISCOVERED FAULTS. 2$ 

defeat the working out of the divine plan in 
our life. When Canova, the great sculptor, 
was about to begin work upon his statue of 
Napoleon, it is said that his keen eye saw a 
tiny red line running through the upper part 
of the splendid block of marble out of which 
he was to carve the statue. The stone had 
been brought at great expense from Paros for 
this express purpose. Common eyes saw no 
flaw in it, but the sculptor saw it, and would 
not use the marble. 

May it not be so ofttimes with lives which 
face great opportunities ? God's eye sees in 
them some undiscovered flaw or fault, some 
tiny line of marring color. God desires truth 
in the inward parts. The life that pleases him 
must be pure and white throughout. He who 
clings to faults discovered, refusing to cast 
them out, or he who refuses to let the candle 
of the Lord search out the hidden faults in 
him, that he may put them away, is marring 
his own destiny. God cannot use him for the 
larger, nobler task or trust for which he had 
planned to use him. The tiny red line running 



24 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

through the marble causes it to be set aside 
and rejected. 

What shall we do ? God alone can know 
our hidden faults. We must ask him to search 
our hearts and try our ways, and to cleanse 
our lives of whatsoever evil thing he finds in 
us. Our prayer should be, — 

"Who can discern his errors? 
Clear thou me from hidden faults." 



CHAPTER III. 

LIFE'S SECOND CHANCE. 

"Winter makes ready for the spring 
By months of struggle and suffering; 
And the victory won from the mortal strife 
Strengthens the fibre and pulse of life. 
How if the earth in its chill despair 
Felt that the fight were too hard to bear, 
Where were the bloom and the vintage then ? 
Where were the harvest for hungering men ? n 

Susan Coolidge. 

If we had but one chance in life it would 
fare badly with most of us. We do scarcely 
anything perfectly the first time we try 
to do it. Nearly always do we fail. Not 
many lives are lived beautifully, without a 
break or a lapse, from childhood to age. If, 
therefore, the opportunity of choosing good 
came to us only once, and was then forever 
withdrawn, few of us would make anything 
of our life. We are in the habit of saying 

25 



26 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

that opportunities never come twice to us. 
One writes, — 

" Never comes the chance that passed: 
That one moment was its last. 
Though thy life upon it hung, 
Though thy death beneath it swung, 
If thy future all the way 
Now in darkness goes astray, 
When the instant born of fate 
Passes through the golden gate, 
When the hour, but not the man, 
Comes and goes from Nature's plan, — 
Nevermore its countenance 
Beams upon thy slow advance ; 
Nevermore that time shall be 
Burden-bearer unto thee. 
Weep and search o'er land and main, 
Lost chance never comes again." 

This is all true, but it is not the whole truth. 
No single opportunity comes twice, but other 
opportunities come. Though we have failed 
once, that is not the end. The past is irrevo- 
cable ; but while there is even the smallest 
margin of life remaining, there is yet another 
chance. 



LIFE'S SECOND CHANCE. 27 

Jeremiah tells us of visiting a potter's house, 
and watching the potter as he wrought on 
the wheels. His work was marred in his 
hands in some way. But instead of throwing 
it away, he made it into another vessel. The 
second vessel was not so beautiful as the one 
the potter first intended to make, but it was 
useful. The clay had a second chance. 

The prophet's parable had its first meaning 
for his own people, but its lesson is for all 
time. For one thing, it tells us that God 
has a plan for every life. The potter has a 
pattern after which he intends to fashion his 
vessel. For every human life there is a divine 
pattern, something which God means it to 
become. This first thought of God for our 
lives is the very best thing possible for them. 

We learn, again, from this ancient acted par- 
able that our lives may be marred in the living, 
so that they shall never attain God's beauti- 
ful thought for them. There is a difference, 
however, between a lump of clay and a human 
life. The marring of the clay may be the 
potter's fault, or it may be the result of an 



28 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

accident ; at least, it cannot be the fault of 
the clay itself. If a misshapen jar or bowl 
comes into your hands, you would not say, 
" What a careless piece of clay it was that 
made itself into this irregular form ! " Rather 
you would say, " What a careless potter it was 
that so spoiled this vessel, when he had the 
soft clay in his hands ! " But when a life 
is marred, and fails of the beauty and noble- 
ness which it was designed to have, you can- 
not blame God. You cannot say, " I was clay 
on the wheel, and the great Potter gave the 
wrong touch, and spoiled the loveliness that 
ought to have been wrought in my life." You 
are not clay, but a human soul. You have 
a will, and God does not shape you as the 
potter moulds his plastic clay. He works 
through your own will, and you can resist 
him, and can defeat his purpose for your 
life, and spoil the noble design into which 
he would fashion you. The blotches in this 
fair world are all the sad work of human hands, 
never of God's hands. 

But this is not all of the lesson. The 



LIFE'S SECOiVB CHANCE. 29 

potter took the clay again when the vessel 
he meant to make was marred, and with it 
made another vessel. The second could not 
be so fine nor so large as the first would have 
been but for the marring. Yet it was better 
that there should be an inferior vessel made 
than that the clay should be thrown away. 
It is thus that God deals with human souls. 
He does not cast off the life that has failed 
of its first and best possibilities. Even in 
the ruins of a soul there are divine elements, 
and so long as a little fragment remains God 
wants to give it still another chance. 

It is said that one day Carlyle suddenly 
stopped at a street crossing, and, stooping down, 
picked up something out of the mud, even 
at the risk of being knocked down and run over 
by passing vehicles. With his bare hands he 
gently rubbed the mud off this thing which he 
had picked up, holding it as carefully and touch- 
ing it as gently as if it had been something 
of great value. He took it to the pavement 
and laid it down on a clean spot on the curb- 
stone. "That," said the old man, in a tone 



30 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

of sweetness he rarely used, "is only a crust 
of bread. Yet I was taught by my mother 
never to waste anything, and, above all, bread, 
more precious than gold. I am sure that the 
little sparrows, or a hungry dog, will get nour- 
ishment from this bit of bread." 

This is a suggestion of the way God looks 
upon a human life which bears his image. 
The merest fragment of life he regards as 
sacred. So long as there is the least trace 
of divine possibility in a human soul, he is 
ready to make something out of it, to take 
it out of the mire and give it another chance. 
If, therefore, one has lost the opportunity to 
realize God's first thought for his life, there 
still remains another chance. "The vessel 
that he made was marred in the hands of the 
potter ; so he made it again, — another vessel." 

In Florence, one of the treasures of art 
admired by thousands of visitors is Michael 
Angelo's representation in marble of the young 
David. The shepherd boy stands with firm 
foothold, the stone grasped tightly in his right 
hand, ready to be sped on its holy errand. 



LIFE'S SECOND CHANCE. 3 I 

When the statue was unveiled, three hundred 
and fifty years ago, it caused an unparalleled 
sensation among all lovers of art. It is, in- 
deed, a marvellous piece of sculpture. 

But the strangely winning thing in the 
story of that statue is, that it was the stone's 
second chance. A sculptor began work on 
a noble piece of marble, but, lacking skill, 
he only hacked and marred the block. It was 
then abandoned as spoiled and worthless, and 
cast aside. For years it lay in a back yard, 
soiled and blackened, half hidden among the 
rubbish. At last Angelo saw it, and at once 
perceived its possibilities. Under his skilful 
hand the stone was cut into the fair and mar- 
vellous beauty which appears in the statue 
of David. Yet it is said that the completed 
work is not quite perfect ; that because of 
the first cutting of the stone the final result 
is marred. 

This is another form of the parable of the 
potter. From a spoiled and castaway block 
was hewn this splendid work of art. Though 
a life has been spoiled by unskilful hands, 



32 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

so that it seems as if all were lost, there is 
one, the great Sculptor, who can take the 
marred, disfigured block, now lying soiled amid 
the world's rubbish, and from it carve yet a 
marvel of beauty, — if not all that it might once 
have been, at least a very beautiful character. 

There is a little poem that tells of a bird 
with a broken wing which one found in a 
woodland meadow : — 

" I healed its wound, and each morning 
It sang its old sweet strain; 
But the bird with the broken pinion 
Never soared as high again. 

I found a young life broken 

By sin's seductive art ; 
And, touched with a childlike pity, 

I took him to my heart. 

He lived with a noble purpose, 

And struggled not in vain ; 
But the life that sin had stricken 

Never soared as high again. 

Yet the bird with the broken pinion 

Kept another from the snare ; 
And the life that sin had stricken 

Raised another from despair. 1 ' 



LIFE'S SECOND CHANCE. 33 

This little poem teaches two lessons. One 
is, that the second chance is not so' good as 
the first. The bird with the broken wing 
never soared as high again as it had soared 
before. The young life w r hich sin had broken, 
but which grace had healed, never was quite 
so beautiful again as before it was stricken, 
never soared so high in its flight as it would 
have done if sin had not hurt it. 

There is an impression among some people 
that a man is a better man after having tasted 
sin, after knowing evil by experience, then 
repenting, being forgiven, and restored. This 
is a mistaken impression. Innocence is far 
better than penitence. Penitence is infinitely 
better than despair; but a life is never so 
beautiful after sin's fires have swept over it 
as it would have been if it had been kept un- 
tarnished, and had realized God's first thought 
for it. The bird with the broken pinion never 
soared so high again. There are some things 
we never get over. The wounds may be 
healed, but the scars remain. There are some 
losses we can never get back. Esau wept 



34 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

bitterly over the losing of his birthright, but 
wept in vain ; he never could get again what 
he had profanely bartered off for a trifle. Lost 
innocence never can be restored. 

The other lesson which the poem teaches 
is the same we have found already in the par- 
able of the potter. The bird with the broken 
pinion was not useless ; it kept another bird 
from the snare. Through its own hurt it had 
gotten a power of helpfulness which it never 
could have had without its experience of wound- 
ing and marring. The same is true of human 
lives which have failed and have fallen into 

sin. 

"The life that sin had stricken, 

Raised another from despair." 

There is no doubt that there is a work pos- 
sible to those who have been hurt in sin's 
battle and have been lifted up again which 
they never could have done without the sad 
experience through which they have passed. 
John B. Gough never could have pleaded with 
such burning eloquence for temperance, as he 
did for so many years, if he had never himself 



LIFE'S SECOND CHANCE. 35 

known from experience the terrible bitterness 
of the curse of strong drink. His own life 
was marred by the dissipation which marked 
his earlier years, and which dragged him down 
into debasement ; and he could never win the 
nobleness and beauty which would have been 
possible to him if he had never so failed 
and sinned against himself. But he took his 
second chance when the first was lost forever, 
and grew into great strength of character and 
into abounding usefulness. It is even doubt- 
ful if he would ever have made so much of 
his life, had it not been for the losing of its 
first chance, and the imperilling of all, which 
wrought afterward in him as such mighty 
motives, impelling him to such heroic life 
and such noble service for his fellow-men. 

The lesson is plain. It is for all of us. It 
is not for one great experience alone, but has 
its perpetual application ; for we are continu- 
ally missing the things which are the first and 
the very best in life's opportunities. It is sad 
that we do this, and we should rigidly train 
ourselves to make the most we can of every 



$6 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

chance in life that comes to us. But when 
we have failed, we should not spend a moment 
in regret ; for regret is vain and useless, and 
only helps to eat away the strength that re- 
mains. We should turn instantly and with 
resistless energy to the saving of what is 
left. There is always another chance, even 
down to the life's latest moment in this world. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GETTING HELP PROM CRITICISM. 

" So, take and use thy work, 
Amend what flaws may lurk, 
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim ! 
My times be in thy hand ! 
Perfect the cup as planned! 
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same." 

Robert Browning. 

Perfection in life and character should be 
the aim of every life. Our prayer should ever 
be to be fashioned into spotless beauty. No 
matter what the cost may be, we should never 
shrink from anything that will teach us a new 
lesson, or put a new touch of loveliness into 
our character. 

We get our lessons from many teachers. We 
read in books fair lines which set holy tasks of 
attainment for us. We see in other lives lovely 
things which inspire in us noble longings. We 

37 



38 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

learn by experience, and we grow by exercise. 
We may get many a lesson, too, from those 
among whom we live. People ought to be a 
means of grace to us. Mere contact of life 
with life is refining and stimulating. 

''Iron sharpeneth iron; 
So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." 

The world is not always friendly to us. It 
is not disposed always to pat us on the back, or 
to pet and praise us. One of the first things a 
young man learns, when he pushes out from his 
own home, where everybody dotes on him, is 
that he must submit to criticism and opposi- 
tion. Not all he does receives commendation. 
But this very condition is healthful. Our 
growth is much more wholesome in such an 
atmosphere, than where we have only adulation 
and praise. 

We ought to get profit from criticism. Two 
pairs of eyes should see more than one. None 
of us have all the wisdom there is in the world. 
However wise any of us may be, there are 
others who know some things better than we 



GETTING HELP FROM CRITICISM. 39 

know them, and who can make valuable and 
helpful suggestions to us, at least concerning 
some points of our work. The shoemaker 
never could have painted the picture, but he 
could criticise the buckle when he stood before 
the canvas which the great artist had covered 
with his noble creations ; and the artist was 
wise enough to welcome the criticism and 
quickly amend his picture, to make it correct. 
Of course the shoemaker knows more about 
shoes, and the tailor or the dressmaker more 
about clothes, and the furniture-maker more 
about furniture, than the artist does. The 
criticisms of these artisans on the things in 
their own special lines ought to be of great 
value to the artist, and he would be a very 
foolish painter who would sneer at their sug- 
gestions and refuse to profit by them. 

The same is true in other things besides art. 
No one's knowledge is really universal. None 
of us know more than a few fragments of the 
great mass of knowledge. There are some 
things somebody else knows better than you 
do, however wide your range of intelligence 



40 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

may be. There are very humble people who 
could give you suggestions well worth taking 
on certain matters concerning which they have 
more correct knowledge than you have. If you 
wish to make your work perfect you must con- 
descend to take hints and information from 
any one and every one who may be ready to 
give it to you. 

It is true, also, that others can see faults 
and imperfections in us which we ourselves 
cannot see. We are too closely identified with 
our own life and work to be unprejudiced ob- 
servers or just critics. We can never make 
the most and the best of our life if we refuse 
to be taught by others than ourselves. A 
really self-made man is very poorly made, be- 
cause he is the product of only one man's 
thought. The strong things in his own individ- 
uality are likely to be emphasized to such a 
degree that they become idiosyncrasies, while 
on other sides his character is left defective. 
The best-made man is the one who in^ his for- 
mative years has the benefit of wholesome criti- 
cism. His life is developed on all sides. Faults 



GETTING HELP FROM CRITICISM. 4 1 

are corrected. His nature is restrained at the 
points where the tendency is to overgrowth, 
while points of weakness are strengthened. 
We all need, not only as a part of our educa- 
tion, but in all our life and work, the corrective 
influence of the opinions and suggestions 
of others. 

" Oh wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursePs as ithers see us ! 
It wad frae mony a blunder free us 
And foolish notion. " 

But in order to get profit from criticism, we 
must relate ourselves to it in a sympathetic and 
receptive way. We must be ready to hear 
and give hospitable thought to the things that 
others may say of us and of what we are doing. 
Some people are only hurt, never helped, by 
criticism, even when it is most sincere. They 
regard it always as unkindly, and meet it with 
a bitter feeling. They resent it, from whatever 
source it may come, and in whatever form, as 
something impertinent. They regard it as 
unfriendly, as a personal assault against which 
they must defend themselves. They seem to 



42 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

think of their own life as something fenced 
about by such sanctities, that no other person 
can with propriety offer even a suggestion con- 
cerning anything that is theirs, unless it be in 
the way of commendation. They have such 
opinions of the infallibility of their own judg- 
ment, and the flawless excellence of their own 
performance, that it seems never to occur to 
them as a possibility that the judgment of 
others might add further wisdom, or point out 
anything better. So they utterly refuse to 
accept criticism, however kindly, or any sug- 
gestion which looks to anything different from 
what they have done. 

We all know people of this kind. So long 
as others will compliment them on their work, 
they give respectful attention and are pleased ; 
but the moment a criticism is made, however 
slight, or even the question whether something 
else would not be an improvement is asked, 
they are offended. They regard as an enemy 
any one who even intimates disapproval or who 
hints, however delicately, that this or that 
might be otherwise. 



GETTING HELP FROM CRITICISM. 43 

It is hard to maintain cordial relations of 
friendship with such persons, for no one cares 
to be forbidden to express an opinion that is 
not an echo of another's. Not many people 
will take the trouble to keep a lock on the door 
of their lips all the while for fear of offending 
a self-conceited friend. Then one who rejects 
and resents all criticism cuts himself off from 
one of the best means of growth and improve- 
ment, He is no longer teachable, and, there- 
fore, is no longer a learner. He would rather 
keep his faults than be humbled by being told 
of them in order to have them corrected. So 
he pays no heed to what any person has to say 
about his work, and gets no benefit whatever 
from the opinions and judgments of others. 

Such a spirit is very unwise. Infinitely bet- 
ter is it that we keep ourselves always ready to 
receive instruction from every source. We are 
not making the most of our life if we are not 
eager to do our best in whatever we do, and to 
make constant progress in our doing. In order 
to do this, we must continually be made aware 
of the imperfections of our performances that 



44 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

we may correct them. No doubt it hurts our 
pride to be told of our faults, but we would 
better let the pain work amendment than work 
resentment. Really, we ought to be thankful 
to any one who shows us a blemish in our life, 
which we then can have removed. No friend 
is truer and kinder to us than he who does this, 
for he helps us to grow into nobler and more 
beautiful character. 

Of course there are different ways of point- 
ing out a fault. One person does it bluntly 
and harshly, almost rudely. Another will find 
a way to make us aware of our faults without 
causing us any feeling of humiliation. Doubt- 
less it is more pleasant to have our correction 
come in this gentle way. It is also the more 
Christian way to give it. Great wisdom is re- 
quired in those who would point out faults in 
others. They need deep love in their own 
heart that they may truly seek the good of 
those in whom they detect the flaws or errors, 
and not criticise in a spirit of exultation. Too 
many take delight in discovering faults in other 
people and in pointing them out. Others do it 



GETTING HELP FROM CRITICISM. 45 

only when they are in anger, blurting out their 
sharp criticisms in fits of bad temper. We 
should all seek to possess the spirit of Christ, 
who was most patient and gentle in telling his 
friends wherein they failed. 

Harm is done ofttimes by the want of this 
spirit in those whose duty it is to teach others. 
St. Paul enjoins fathers not to provoke their 
children to wrath, lest they be discouraged. 
There are parents who almost never correct 
their children save in anger. They are contin- 
ually telling them of their faults, as if their 
whole existence were a dreary and impertinent 
mistake, as if everything they say or do were 
wrong, and as if parents can fulfil their duty 
to their children only by continually nagging 
at them and scolding them. 

Those who are anointed to train and teach 
the young have a tremendous responsibility for 
the wise and loving exercise of the power that 
is theirs. We should never criticise or correct, 
save in love. If we find ourselves in anger or 
cherishing any bitter, unkind, or resentful feel- 
ing, as we are about to point out an error or a 



46 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

mistake in another person, or in the other's 
work, we would better be silent and not speak 
until we can speak in love. Only when our 
heart is full of love are we fit to judge another, 
or to tell him of his faults. 

But while this is the Christian way for all 
who would make criticisms of others, it is true 
also, that however we learn of our faults, how- 
ever ungentle and unsympathetic the person 
may be who makes us aware of them, we would 
better accept the correction in a humble, loving 
way and profit by it. Perhaps few of us hear 
the honest truth about ourselves until some one 
grows angry with us and blurts it out in bitter 
words. It may be an enemy who says the 
severe thing about us, or it may be some one 
who is base and unworthy of respect ; but who^ 
ever it may be, we would better ask whether 
there may not be some truth in the criticism, 
and if there be, then set ourselves to get clear 
of it. In whatever way we are made aware of 
a fault we ought to be grateful for the fact ; for 
the discovery gives us an opportunity to rise to 
a better, nobler life, or to a higher and finer 
achievement. 



GETTING HELP FROM CRITICISM. 47 

There are people whose criticisms are not 
such as can profit us. It is easy to find fault 
even with the noblest work. Then there are 
those who are instinctive fault-finders, regard- 
ing it as their privilege, almost their duty, to 
give an opinion on every subject that comes 
before them, and to offer some criticism on 
every piece of work that they see. Their opin- 
ions, however, are usually valueless, and oft- 
times it requires much patience to receive them 
graciously, without showing irritation. But 
even in such cases, when compelled to listen 
to loquacious animadversions from those who 
know nothing whatever of the matters concern- 
ing which they speak so authoritatively, we 
would do well to receive all criticisms and 
suggestions in good temper and without 
impatience. 

An interesting story of Michael Angelo is 
related, which illustrates the wise way of treat- 
ing even ignorant, officious, and impertinent 
criticism. When the artist's great statue of 
David was placed for the first time in the Plaza 
in Florence, all the people were hushed in 



48 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

wonder before its noble majesty — all except 
Soderinni. This man looked at the statue from 
different points of view with a wise, critical air, 
and then suggested that the nose was a little 
too long. The great sculptor listened quietly 
to the suggestion, and taking his chisel and 
mallet, he set a ladder against the statue, in 
order to reach the face, and climbed up, carry- 
ing a little marble dust in his hand. Then he 
seemed to be working carefully upon the objec- 
tionable feature, as if changing it to suit his 
critic's taste, letting the marble dust fall as he 
wrought. When he came down Soderinni 
again looked at the figure, now from this point 
of view and then from that, at last expressing 
entire approval. His suggestion had been 
accepted, as he supposed, and he was satisfied. 
The story furnishes a good illustration of a 
great deal of fault-finding to which we must 
listen. It is unintelligent and valueless. But 
it cannot be restrained. There is no subject 
under heaven on which these wise people do 
not claim to have a right to express an opinion, 
and there is no work so perfect that they can- 



GETTING HELP FROM CRITICISM. 49 

not point out where it is faulty and might be 
improved. They are awed by no greatness. 
Such criticisms are worthy only of contempt, 
and such critics do not deserve courteous atten- 
tion. But it is better that we treat them with 
patience. It helps at least in our own self- 
discipline, and it is the nobler way. 

This, then, is the lesson — that we should not 
resent criticism whether it be made in a kindly 
or in an unkindly way ; that we should be eager 
and willing to learn from any one, since even 
the humblest and most ignorant man knows 
something better than we do and is able to be 
our teacher at some point; that the truth 
always should be welcomed — especially the 
truth about ourselves, that which affects our 
own life and work, — however it may wound 
our pride and humble us, or however its man- 
ner of coming to us may hurt us ; and that the 
mo"ment we learn of anything that is not beau- 
tiful in us, we should seek its correction. Thus 
only can we ever reach the best things in 
character or in achievement. 



CHAPTER V. 

FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. 

" Who doeth good by loving deed or word ; 
Who lifteth up a fallen one or dries a tear ; 
Who helps another bear his heavy cross, 
Or on the parched and fevered lips doth pour 
A blessed draught of water sweet and cool, 
Becomes co-worker with the Lord of all." 

There are many things which God does, in 
which we can have no part. A child wished he 
could be a painter, that he might help God 
paint the clouds and skies and sunsets. God 
wants no help in this work. He wrought un- 
helped by creature-hand in making the worlds. 
In providence, too, he has no fellow-worker. No 
one assists him in keeping the stars in their 
orbits, in sending rains and dews and summer 
sunshine. No one helps him paint the roses 
and the lilies. 

But there are other things in which God per- 

50 



FELLOW-WORKERS WLTH GOD. 5 I 

mits us to be his co-workers. He calls us up 
close beside him, to work with him, doing a 
part while he does a part. A story is told of 
an artist who greatly desired to have a share in 
the decorating of a famous building. If he 
could not do it all, he asked that he might be 
permitted to paint one panel of one of the great 
doors. If this request could not be granted, he 
craved to be allowed at least to hold the brushes 
for the master who should do the work. If it 
was deemed to be such an honor and privilege 
to do even the smallest part on a building of 
only earthly glory, what an honor it is to work 
with Christ in the building of his great spiritual 
temple ! 

Yet this privilege is ours. We may not help 
God paint his clouds and sunsets, but we can 
put tints of immortal beauty upon human souls. 
In a certain sense we are fellow-workers with 
God in all the affairs of our lives. We often 
imagine we are doing certain fine things with- 
out God's help. But we are not. A man 
makes great inventions, constructs wonderful 
machines, harnesses steam and electricity, and 



52 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

says, "See what I have done!." But who put 
into nature the mysterious forces and energies 
which he has made available for practical use ? 
In their inventions and discoveries, men only 
find the powers God stored away ages since. 
Men are only discoverers and adjusters. They 
run wires on poles, or lay cables in the sea; 
but the currents that flash through them, car- 
rying messages of business, commerce, joy, 
sorrow, come from God's hidden reserves of 
energy. Men are working with God, and their 
part is small. 

In spiritual life it is also true that we are fel- 
low-workers with God. He calls us to stand 
beside him and do a part while he does a part. 
When a mother, with a great joy in her heart, 
takes her baby into her arms and looks into its 
face, God says to her, "Take this child, and 
nurse it for me." It is God's child. He wants 
it trained, its powers developed, so that when 
at length the man stands before his tasks he 
may not fail, but may do them well. Yet God 
gives into the mother's hands the duty of nurs- 
ing the child for him, teaching it, putting into 



FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. 53 

its heart gentle thoughts, wooing out the sweet 
love that sleeps there, and thus preparing the 
life for its place and work. Yet alone she can- 
not do anything. God and the mother are 
fellow-workers in the training of the life. 

The teacher sits down with his class. The 
end of the teaching is, the bringing of the 
scholars to Christ, the building up in them of a 
Christian character, and the leading of them out 
into ways of usefulness and loving service. 
What is the teacher's part? He can make 
plain to his class the word and will of God, and 
he can also represent Christ to them, showing 
them in his own life glimpses of the divine com- 
passion, tenderness, yearning, truth, purity, and 
love. But he cannot himself do what needs to 
be done in their young lives ; only God can do 
that. But God works through the teacher. 
God and he are fellow-workers. 

So it is in all Christian work. We have our 
part. God has ordained that the heavenly 
treasure shall be put in earthen vessels. We 
must never forget, however, that we are not 
doing the work ourselves. Saddest of all 



54 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

things in Christian workers is the losing out of 
the heart of the sense of dependence upon 
God, the leaving out of Christ, the feeling 
that they are doing the things alone. God will 
work through us only when we humbly, in faith 
and love and self-renunciation, lay ourselves 
into his hands, that his life may flow through 
us to the lives we are seeking to bless. 

We are the chisel with which God carves his 
statues. Unquestionably we must do the work. 
Our hands must touch men's lives and beautify 
them. The mother, the teacher, the Christian 
friend, must carve and mould the life of the 
child into the beauty of the Lord. But the 
human worker is only the chisel. The sculptor 
needs his chisel, but the chisel can do nothing, 
produce no beauty, of itself. We must put our- 
selves into Christ's hand that he may use us. 

There is a hallowing influence in this thought 
that we are working beside God in what he is 
doing on immortal lives. Are we worthy to do 
it ? Hawthorne, speaking of a block of marble 
and the possibilities of beauty that lie in it, 
waiting to be brought out, said that the stone 



FELLOW-WORKERS WLTH GOD. 55 

assumed a sacred character, and that no man 
should dare touch it unless he felt within him- 
self a consecration and priesthood. If this be 
true when it is only a block of marble that is to 
be wrought upon, how much more is it true of 
a human soul, — a child's life, for example, laid 
in a mother's arms ; any life laid in your hands 
or mine, — that we may free the angel that 
waits within it ! It is a most sacred moment 
when a life is put before us to be touched 
by us. 

Suppose that the mother, — suppose that you 
or I, — should not do the holy work well, and 
the life should be marred, hurt, stunted, its 
beauty blurred, its purity stained, its develop- 
ment impaired, its power weakened; think of 
the sadness of the result. How sweet the 
mother must keep her own spirit, how gentle, 
how patient, how pure and true, while she is 
working with God in nursing her child for him ! 
How heavenly must the teacher keep his tem- 
per, how quiet, how unselfish, how Christlike, 
when he is sitting beside the Master, working 
with him on the lives of the scholars ! How 



56 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

softly we should all walk continually, with rev- 
erent, chastened, uplifted feeling and hallowed 
spirit, as we remember that we are fellow- 
workers with God! 

There is here also a strong impulse to faith- 
fulness. The work we do for God and with 
God we must do well. We are tempted to say, 
" My part is not important ; it is so small. It 
cannot matter much to God whether I do it 
well or ill. He does not need my little part." 
But that is not true. Our least part is impor- 
tant. God needs our faithfulness. He needs 
the mother in training the child, — needs the 
most conscientious, most painstaking, most 
beautiful work she can do. If her hand slacks 
even only for one day, doing its part carelessly, 
less than faithfully, there may be a blemish, a 
marring in the child's life, which shall reveal 
itself years hence. The completeness of the 
finished work depends always on our doing our 
best. We rob God if we are ever less than 
faithful. 

There is special encouragement in this truth 
for those who feel unequal to the duty that the 



FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. $7 

Master assigns to them. They see others who 
do beautiful things that bless and brighten the 
world, but it seems to them that all they can do 
is so commonplace, so homely, so full of blur- 
ring and fault, that it is not worth while for 
them to do it at all. But the clumsiest hands 
truly surrendered to God may do work that is 
most beautiful in his sight. 

Long ago, in quaint old Nuremberg, lived 
two boys, Albrecht Diirer and Franz Knigs- 
tein. Both wished to be artists, and both studied 
and wrought with great earnestness. Albrecht 
had genius ; but Franz had only love for art, 
without the power to put on canvas the beauti- 
ful visions that haunted him. Years passed, 
and they planned to make each an etching of 
the Lord's Passion. When they compared 
their work, that of Franz was cold and lifeless, 
while Albrecht's was instinct with beauty and 
pathos. Then Franz saw it all, and knew that 
he could never be an artist. His heart was 
almost broken ; but he said in a voice choked 
with tears, yet full of manly courage, "Franz, 
the good Lord gave me no such gift as this of 



58 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

yours; but something, some homely duty, he 
has waiting somewhere for me to do. Yet now 
— be you artist of Nuremberg, and I " — 

"Stay, Franz, be still one moment," cried 
Albrecht, seizing his pencil. Franz supposed 
Albrecht was adding some finishing touches to 
his exquisite drawing, and waited patiently in 
his attitude of surrender, his hands folded to- 
gether. With his swift pencil Albrecht drew 
a few lines and showed the sketch to his 
friend. 

"Why, those are only my hands/' said Franz. 
"Why did you take them?" — "I took them," 
said Albrecht, "as you stood there making the 
sad surrender of your life so very bravely. I 
said to myself, ' Those hands that may never 
paint a picture can now most certainly make 
one/ I have faith in those folded hands, my 
brother-friend. They will go to men's hearts 
in the days to come." 

Albrecht's words were true prophecy. Into 
the world of love and duty has gone the story 
so touching and helpful in its beautiful simpli- 
city; and into the world of art has gone the 



FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. 59 

picture — for Albrecht Diirer's famous "Folded 
Hands" is but a picture of the hands of Franz 
Knigstein as they were folded that day in 
sweet, brave resignation, when he gave up his 
heart's dearest wish, and yet believed that the 
Lord had some homely duty still worth his 
doing. 

This charming story tells us that if we cannot 
do the beautiful things we see others doing for 
Christ and which we long to do, we can at least 
do some lowly work for him. It teaches us, 
too, that self-surrender to God, though our 
heart's fondest hope is laid down, is, in God's 
sight, really the most beautiful thing we can do 
with our life. It teaches us also, that the 
hands which can do no brilliant thing for God, 
may yet become hands of benediction in the 
world. If we are truly fellow-workers with 
God, he can use whatever we have that we 
really surrender to him. And ofttimes he 
can do more with our failures than with our 
successes. 

Then not only are we fellow-workers with 
God, but also with each other. Sometimes we 



60 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

are tempted to be envious of others who are 
working by our side. They seem to over- 
shadow us. It hurts us to hear them praised. 
It appears to us as if they wronged us in some 
way, by drawing off some measure of attention 
from us, by obscuring our little work in the 
brilliance of their larger or more conspicuous 
achievement. It should cure us of all such 
miserable feelings to remember that in God's 
perfect plan each has his own particular part 
to do in the great whole. The work of our 
brother next to us is his, not ours. We could 
not do it, even if he were not in his place. The 
fact that he does his part well, and receives 
approval and commendation, will not detract 
from our commendation if we are faithful in 
our own place. 

The work of no one is more than a fragment 
at the best. Nobody finishes anything in this 
world. The strongest, the most skilful, the 
longest-lived, only puts a few touches on some- 
thing of God's. Perhaps he begins a piece of 
new work, and then leaves it for others to con- 
tinue ; or perhaps he enters into the labor of 



FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. 6 1 

others who have come before him, carrying it 
on a little farther. One sows, another reaps — 
we are co-workers. Our work well done will be 
all the more perfect if those who work with us 
do their part well; and no matter how others 
are praised, God's approval of us will depend 
upon our own faithfulness. 

6 'What matter, friend, though you and I 

May sow, and others gather? 
We build and others occupy, 

Each laboring for the other. 
What though we toil from sun to sun, 

And men forget to flatter? 
The noblest work our hands have done — 

If God approve, what matter?" 



CHAPTER VI. 

OUR DEBT TO OTHERS. 

" Brother, we are surely bound 
On the same journey, and our eyes alike 
Turn up and onward; wherefore, now thou risest, 
Lean on mine arm, and let us for a space 
Pursue the path together." 

Buchanan. 

The true standard of greatness is service. 
It is not what our life is in gifts, in culture, in 
strength, but what we do with our life, that is 
the real test of character. Our Lord taught 
this truth when he said, " Whosoever would 
become great among you shall be your minis- 
ter; and whosoever would be first among you 
shall be your servant/' It has been well said : 
"He only is great of heart who floods the 
world with a great affection. He only is great 
of mind who stirs the world with great thoughts. 
He only is great of will who does something to 

62 



OUR DEBT TO OTHERS, 63 

shape the world to a great career. And he is 
greatest who does the most of all these things 
and does them best." We are to hold all that 
is in us at the service of our fellow-men, in 
Christ's name. 

St. Paul speaks of himself as debtor to every 
one, Greek and barbarian, wise and foolish. It 
was love that he owed, — the only kind of debt 
that he believed in. "Owe no man anything," 
he said elsewhere, "save to love one another/' 
Love is a debt which never can be altogether 
settled. You may pay it all off to-day, but to- 
morrow you will find it heavy as ever. It is a 
debt which everybody owes to everybody. Nor 
can it be paid off with any mere sentimental 
love. It cost St. Paul a great deal to settle his 
obligations and pay his debts to other men. 
There is a sort of philanthropic sentiment 
which some people have which does not cost 
them very much, — an eloquent speech now and 
then in behalf of their pet cause, and perhaps 
an occasional contribution of money. But to 
pay his debts to men, St. Paul gave up all he 
had ? and then gave himself up to service, suffer- 



64 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

ing, and sacrifice to the very uttermost. Lov- 
ing always costs. We cannot save our own 
life and pay the debts of love we owe. 

We are in debt to everybody. It is not hard 
to recognize this indebtedness to the gentle, 
cultured, well-to-do Greeks. Anybody can love 
them and be kind to them, they are so beauti- 
ful and sweet. The trouble is with the barba- 
rians. They are not of "our set;" they are 
not refined. They are rude and wicked ; they 
are heathens. It is not so hard, either, to love 
them in a philanthropic way as heathens, far off 
and out of our sight, as it is in a close, personal, 
practical way, when they come to live next door 
to us, and when we must meet them every day. 
But the truth is, we are as really debtors to 
these barbarians as we are to the Greeks. 
Perhaps our debt to them is even greater, 
because they need us more. 

It is well that we should get a very clear 
idea of our true relation as Christians to all 
other people. We owe love to every one, and 
love always serves. Serving is an essential 
quality of love. Love does not stand among 



OUR DEBT TO OTHERS. 6$ 

people commanding attention and demanding 
to be ministered unto, exacting rights, honor, 
respect. Love seeks to give, to minister, to be 
of use, to do good to others. There are many 
people who want to have friends, meaning by- 
friends pleasant persons who will come into 
their life to do things for them, who will minis- 
ter to their comfort, who will advance their in- 
terests, who will flatter their vanity, who will 
make living easier for them. But that is not the 
way Christ would define friendship. He would 
put it just the other way. The true Christian 
desire is to be a friend to others, to do things 
for them, to minister to their comfort, to fur- 
ther their interests, to be a help and a blessing 
to them. That was St. Paul's thought when he 
said that he was a debtor to every man. He 
wanted to be every one's ministering friend. 
When a man stood before him, Paul's heart 
yearned to do him good in some way, went out 
to him in loving thought, longed to impart to 
him some spiritual gift, to add to his comfort, 
happiness, or usefulness. It is thus we should 
relate ourselves to every human being who 



66 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

comes within our influence. To every person 
we meet we have an errand. One has put it 
well in the following lines : 

"May every soul that touches mine — 
Be it the slightest contact — get therefrom some 

good, 
Some little grace, one kindly thought, 
One inspiration yet unfelt, one bit of courage 
For the darkening sky, one gleam of faith 
To brave the thickening ills of life, 
One glimpse of brighter skies beyond the gather- 
ing mists, 
To make this life worth while, 
And heaven a surer heritage.'" 

This does not mean that we should be offi- 
cious and obtrusive in pressing our help upon 
those we meet. There is a story of one whose 
prayer was that he might be permitted to do a 
great deal of good without even knowing it. 
That is the best helpfulness which flows out of 
the heart and life as light from a star, as fra- 
grance from a flower. Love works most effec- 
tively when it works unconsciously, almost 
instinctively, inspired from within. Then it 



OUR DEBT TO OTHERS. 67 

bestows its blessing or does its good unobtru- 
sively. You do not know you are being helped. 
Your friend does not come to you and say, "I 
want to cheer you up. I want to cure you of 
that bad habit. I want to give you more wis- 
dom. I want to help you to be noble.'' If he 
came thus, announcing with flourish of trumpets 
his benevolent intention toward you, he would 
probably defeat his purpose. But he comes as 
your friend, with no programme, no heralding 
of his desire; comes simply loving you, and 
bringing into your life the best that is in his 
own life, sincerely yearning in some way to be 
a help to you. Then virtue passes from him 
to you, and new happiness and blessing come 
to you from him, you know not how. You 
have new courage, new gladness, new inspira- 
tion. Sin seems even more ignoble and un- 
worthy, and holiness shines with brighter 
radiance. You are strengthened in your pur- 
pose to live worthily. You are more eager to 
make the most of your life. Thus love uncon- 
sciously, and without any definite plan, quickens 
and inspires another life to do its best. There 



68 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

is no other way of paying our debt to others 
which is so Christlike as this. Love gives 
itself, its own very life, to become life to others. 

" O Lord! that I could waste my life for others, 
With no ends of my own ; 
That I could pour myself into my brothers, 
And live for them alone ! " 

The whole drift of Christian teaching and 
impulse is on the line of this lesson. Our 
Lord's definitions and illustrations of love all 
emphasize this quality of helpful serving. 
"Not to be ministered unto, but to minister," 
was the saying that epitomized the whole mo- 
tive of his own blessed life. The good Samar- 
itan was the Master's ideal of the working of 
love in human experience. When asked who 
was greatest in the kingdom of heaven, his 
reply was very plain and clear, — he who serves 
the most fully and the most unselfishly. 

St. Paul, who so wondrously caught the 
spirit of his Master, has many words which 
show varying phases of the truth that love's 
very essential quality is unselfish helpfulness, 



OUR DEBT TO OTHERS, 69 

the carrying of the life with all its rich gifts 
and powers in such a way that it may be a 
blessing to every other life it touches. " Love 
seeketh not its own." Its thought and service 
are for others. "Ye ought to help the weak." 
" We then that are strong ought to bear the 
infirmities of the weak, and not to please our- 
selves." There are those who are weak in 
body, and must lean on the strength of others. 
We ofttimes see illustrations of this in homes 
where the invalid of the household draws the 
strength of all the family to his helping. But 
physical weakness is not the only weakness. 
There are those who are spiritually weak, — 
feeble in purpose, broken by long sinning, until 
almost no strength remains in them, or enfee- 
bled by sorrow. The law of love, that the 
strong should bear the infirmities of the weak, 
is quite as applicable in this sphere of life as in 
the case of physical weakness. 

4 'Lift a little — lift a little! 

Many they who need thine aid, 
Many lying on the roadside 

'Neath misfortune's dreary shade. 



yo THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Pass not by, like priest and Levite, 

Heedless of thy fellow-man ; 
But with heart and arms extended 

Be the good Samaritan." 

In these late days men are doing wonderful 
things for those who are suffering from infirm- 
ities. They educate the blind, until the priva- 
tion of blindness is almost blotted out. They 
teach the dumb to speak. They take imbeciles 
and the feeble-minded, and with almost infinite 
patience they find the soul, as it were, that lies 
hidden in the remote depths of the being, and 
call it out, ofttimes restoring to sanity and to 
usefulness lives that seemed hopelessly imbe- 
cile. This is very beautiful. It is all the work 
of Christianity. Heathen civilizations had no 
sympathy with weakness, and no patience with 
it. The sickly child, they said, would better 
die. The lame, the blind, the dumb, the in- 
sane, were simply cast out to perish. Chris- 
tianity has filled the world with love. The 
other night four of the wisest physicians in a 
great city sat by a young child's crib through 
all the watches, doing all that science and skill 



OUR DEBT TO OTHERS. 7 1 

could do to save the little one's life. It is 
Christianity that has taught such lessons as 
this. 

We want the same interest in the spiritual 
helping of those who are weak. Those who 
are strong should give of their strength to sup- 
port and uphold the weak. Those who have 
experience should become guides to the inex- 
perienced. Those who have been comforted 
should carry comfort to those who are sorrow- 
ing. We are to be to others what Jesus would 
be if he were in our place. The best that is in 
us should ever be at the service of even the 
least worthy who stand before us needing sym- 
pathy or help. If we have this feeling, we 
should look at no human life with disdain. It 
will put an end to all our miserable pride, to all 
our petty tyrannies and despotisms. It will 
lead us to ask concerning every one who passes 
before us, not, "What can I get from this man 
for my own gain ? How can I make him serve 
me?" But rather, "What can I do to help this 
brother of mine, to add to his happiness, to re- 
lieve his trouble, to put him in the way of sue- 



7 2 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

cessful life, to comfort his sorrow, and to give 
him pleasure?'' 

If this were the habitual attitude of love, 
paradise would soon be restored. We live con- 
tinually in the midst of great human needs, and 
every one has something to give, something 
that would help a little, at least, in supplying 
these needs. If we have but our five barley 
loaves, and bring them to our Master for his 
blessing, we can go forth and with them feed 
thousands. 

Then we need not fear that in giving out our 
paltry store we shall impoverish ourselves. No, 
it is by selfishly withholding our little that im- 
poverishment will come to us. Had the woman 
refused to feed the hungry stranger at her gate, 
her meal and oil would have sufficed for only 
one little day for herself and her son. But she 
recognized her debt to this wayfarer, and shared 
with him her scanty supply; and, lo! it lasted 
for them both through all the days of the fam- 
ine. If we use what we have for ourselves 
alone, it will waste and soon be done, and we 
shall starve. But if we pay our debt of love, 



OUR DEBT TO OTHERS. 73 

and share our little, it will multiply, and will 
last unto the end. Ida Whipple Benham 
writes: — 

" Keep it not idly by thee — hoard it not! 

Thy friend hath need of it ; behold, he stands 
Waiting to take the bounty of thy hands ; 
Pay him the debt thou owest, long forgot, 
Or — hast thou paid already — ease his lot 

Of that which he would sell, or loaf, or lands — 
Whate^r his need can spare and thine demands ; 
So shall thy wealth be clean and without spot. 

Dost thou not know? hast thou not understood? 
The stagnant pool breeds pestilence, disease ; 
The hurrying stream bears bounty on its tide. 
Pass on thy gold, a messenger of good ; 
Swift let it speed on gracious ministries ; 
Wing it with love and let its flight be wide." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GREATNESS. 

" The easy path in the lowland hath little of grand or new, 
But a toilsome ascent leads on to a wide and glorious view; 
Peopled and warm is the valley, lonely and chill the height ; 
But the peak that is nearer the storm-cloud is nearer the stars 
of light." 

No doubt it is natural to desire easy ways in 
life. None of us love hardness for its own 
sake. We all like to have good things come to 
us as favors, as gifts, without toil or sacrifice 
or cost. But not thus, ordinarily, do life's best 
things come to us. Nor would they be best 
things if we received them in this way. The 
gold of life we must dig out of the rocks with 
our own hands in order to make it our own. 
The larger blessing we find not in the possess- 
ing, but in the getting. This is the secret that 
lies at the heart of our Lord's beatitude, "It is 
more blessed to give than to receive." He did 

74 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GREATNESS. 75 

not say it is more pleasant to give than to 
receive, or more easy to human nature, but 
more blessed. 

It is related in an ancient Bible record that 
the people of Joseph came once to Joshua with 
a complaint concerning their allotment in the 
promised land. They said, "Why hast thou 
given me but one lot and one part for an inher- 
itance, seeing I am a great people ?" Joshua's 
answer was, "If thou be a great people, get thee 
up to the forest, and cut down for thyself 
there." The incident is full of suggestion. It 
gives us an example of a premise with two dif- 
ferent conclusions. The people said, "We are 
a great tribe; therefore give us a larger por- 
tion. " Joshua said, "Yes, you are a great 
people; therefore, clear the forests from the 
mountains, drive out the enemy, and take pos- 
session. " To his mind, their greatness was a 
reason why they should take care of themselves 
and win their own larger portion. 

One teaching from this incident is that it is 
not the bravest and most wholesome thing to 
be eager for favors and for help from others. 



/6 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

These people wished to be recognized as the 
most important tribe, but they wanted this 
prominence and wealth bestowed upon them 
without exertion of their own. There are men 
of this class in every community. They want to 
rise in the world, but they would rise on the 
exertions and sacrifices of others — not their 
own. They want larger farms, but they would 
have some other hand than their own clear 
away the forests and cultivate the soil. 

We find the same in spiritual life. There 
are those who sigh for holiness and beauty of 
character, but they are not willing to pay the 
price. They sing, "More holiness give me," 
and dream of some lofty spiritual attainment, 
some transfiguration, but they are not willing 
to endure the toils, to fight the battles, and to 
make the self-sacrifices necessary to win these 
celestial heights. They would make praying a 
substitute for effort, for struggle, for the cruci- 
fying of self. They want a larger spiritual in- 
heritance, but they have no thought of taking 
it in primeval forests which their own hands 
must cut down. 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GREATNESS. *J7 

The truth is, however, that God gives us our 
inheritance just as he gave Joseph's lot to him. 
Our promised land has to be won, every inch of 
it. And each must win his own personal por- 
tion. No one can win the inheritance for any 
other. You must conquer your own tempta- 
tions—your dearest friend by your side cannot 
overcome them for you. You must train and 
discipline your own faith. You must cultivate 
your own heart-life. You must learn patience, 
gentleness, and all the lessons of love for your- 
self. No one can give you any Christian grace 
as one gives a present to another. There is a 
deep truth in that touch in the parable, when 
the wise virgins refused to give of their oil to 
those whose lamps were going out. Perhaps 
you have thought it ungenerous in them, when 
you heard them say, "Go to them that sell, and 
buy for yourselves. We have not enough for 
us and you." But the teaching is that grace 
is not transferable, cannot be passed from heart 
to heart. The wise could not give of their oil 
to the foolish. No one can live for another at 
any point. Even God cannot give us holiness, 



/8 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

peace, and the rich results of victorious living, 
without struggle, battle, or self-denial upon our 
own part. True it is that God works in us 
both to will and to do, but the text which tells 
us this begins, " Work out your own salvation." 
God works in us only when we begin to work 
at his bidding. 

Another lesson here is that truest friendship 
must ofttimes decline to do for men what they 
can do for themselves. Joshua may have 
seemed a little unkind to his own tribe, but 
really he was not. The best kindness to them 
was to send them out to do the things they 
could do. It was far better to command them to 
go into the forest and cut down the timber and 
clear off the land for themselves, than it would 
have been to give them a broad acreage of new 
land all cleared and under cultivation. It was 
far better to send them to drive out the ene- 
mies with the iron chariots, conquering the 
valley for themselves, than it would have been 
to send an army to make the conquest for them. 

Our best friends are not those who make life 
easy for us ; our best friends are those who put 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GREATNESS. 79 

courage, energy, and resolution into our hearts. 
There are thousands of lives dwarfed and hurt 
irreparably by pampering. Parents, ofttimes, in 
the very warmth and eagerness of their love, do 
sad harm in their children's lives by overhelping 
them ; by doing things for them which it were 
better to teach them to do for themselves; by 
sparing them struggles, self-denials, hardships, 
which it were better for the children to meet. 

Friendship is in constant danger of overhelp- 
ing in this way. When one we love comes to 
us with a difficulty, it is love's first impulse to 
solve it for him, whereas it would be a thousand 
times better kindness if we put him in the way 
of solving it for himself. If you can wake up a 
young man, arouse his sleeping or undiscovered 
powers, so that he will win a fortune or do a 
brave thing with his own hands and brain, that 
is an infinitely better thing to do for him than 
if you were to give him a fortune as a present. 
In the former case, in getting his fortune, 
he has gotten also trained powers, energy, 
strength, self-reliance, disciplined character, 
and all the elements that belong to strong 



80 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

manhood. In the other case he has gotten 
nothing but the money. He has missed all the 
lessons he would have learned, and all the en- 
largement and enrichment of life he would have 
gotten in the struggle and the conquest, and 
these are the true acquisitions in life. Things 
are not possessions. Money and real estate 
and stocks and bonds are not real possessions 
in the hands of a man with a soul. They are 
entirely external to the man himself. They 
make a man no greater, no more a man, if they 
are merely put into his hands. In winning 
a fortune the man will grow. Work itself is 
always a better blessing than that which one 
works to get. Hence it is a greater kindness 
to incite another to open the hard rocks and 
thus find the water for himself, than it is to 
bring him the water which another has led 
down from the mountains. 

That was the way Joshua showed his friend- 
ship for these children of Joseph. He would 
not do them the unkindness of freeing them 
from the toil of conquest and subjugation. He 
set them to win the land for themselves, be- 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GREATNESS. 8 1 

cause the blessing lay as much in the winning 
as in the possessing. 

That is God's way with us. He does not 
make life easy for us. He does not promise to 
lift the burden off our shoulder even when we 
cast it upon him. It is God's gift to us, this 
burden of ours, and to lay it down would be to 
lay down a blessing. It is something our life 
needs, and it would be an unkindness to take it 
away. Surely it is a wiser love that puts new 
strength into your heart and arm, so that you 
can go on with your hard duty, your heavy re- 
sponsibility, your weight of care, without faint- 
ing, than would be the love which should take 
the load away and leave you free from any bur- 
den. You may think you would prefer the 
latter way, that it would be easier, but you 
would miss the blessing, and your life would 
be weaker and poorer in the end. 

God's purpose always is to make something 
of us, to bring out the best that is in us. 
Hence he does not clear the forest for us, but 
puts the axe into our hands and bids us to cut 
it down for ourselves, And while we prepare 



82 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

the ground for tillage we grow healthy and 
strong ourselves through the toil. He does 
not drive out the enemies for us ; he puts the 
sword into our hands and sends us to drive 
them out. The struggle does us good. The 
wrestling makes us strong. 

Still another lesson from this incident is that 
true greatness should show itself, not in de- 
manding favors or privileges, but in achieving 
great things. The people of Joseph thought 
that their prominence entitled them to a portion 
above others. "No," said Joshua, "your prom- 
inence entitles you only to the privilege of the 
finest heroism and the largest labor/' So he 
gave them the hardest task. The way a com- 
mander honors the best regiment on the field 
is not by assigning it to some easy post, to 
some duty away from danger. He honors it by 
giving it the most perilous post, the duty re- 
quiring the most splendid courage. So it is in 
all life — the place of honor is always the hard- 
est place, where the most delicate and difficult 
duty must be done, where the heaviest burden 
of responsibility must be borne. It is never a 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GREATNESS. 83 

real honor to be given an easy place. Instead 
of demanding a place of honor as a favor of 
friendship, which sets no seal of greatness upon 
our brow, we should win our place of honor by 
worthy deeds and services. 

Our Lord taught this lesson when the disci- 
ples strove for the highest positions. They 
wished that he would merely appoint them to 
seats on his right and left hand. His answer 
is very important. Men are not appointed to 
the high places in spiritual life, he said, "It is 
not mine to give." Even Christ cannot give 
any disciple rank or place in his kingdom. It 
must be won by the disciple himself. In hu- 
man governments, rulers may put their favor- 
ites in places of honor merely to show them 
regard. Appointments are ofttimes arbitrary 
in such cases, and unworthy men are set in ex- 
alted seats. But places are never given to men 
in Christ's kingdom ; they must be won. 

Then our Lord went further and explained 
the principle on which places are assigned to 
his disciples. " Whosoever would become great 
among you shall be your minister; and whoso- 



84 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

ever would be first among you shall be your 
servant. " That is, rank in Christ's kingdom is 
in proportion to service. He who serves his 
fellow-men most utterly, in Christ's name, is 
the highest among men. Or, to put it in an- 
other form, instead of claiming rank by appoint- 
ment or favor, you must win it by serving your 
fellows, by using your strength, your abilities, 
your greatness, in doing good to others. The 
only privilege your superiority over others gives 
you is the privilege of doing good to others in 
superior ways. 

This truth is far-reaching in its applications. 
It should sweep out of our thought forever all 
feeling that others owe us favors ; all that spirit 
which shows itself in self-seeking, in claims for 
place or precedence over others. It should 
make us despise all the miserable toggery of 
professed rank, aristocracy, blood, in which so 
many people play such farces. "What are you 
doing with your life? " is the only question that 
is asked, when rank is to be measured. The 
law of love is that with whatsoever we have we 
must serve our fellowmen. Selfishness dis- 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GREATNESS. 85 

crowns a life. The least talented man in the 
world who uses his little powers with which to 
serve and help others, is higher in rank in 
God's sight than the most nobly gifted man 
who uses his great power only to advance his 
own interests. 

The most highly dowered life that this world 
ever saw was that of Jesus Christ. Yet he de- 
manded no recognition of men. He claimed 
no rank. He never said his lowly place was 
too small, too narrow, for the exercise of his 
great abilities. He used his greatness in doing 
good, in blessing the world. He washed men's 
feet with those hands which angels would 
have kissed. He was the greatest among men, 
and he was the servant of all. That is the 
true mission of greatness — to serve. There 
is no other worthy way of using whatever gifts 
God has bestowed upon us. Instead of claim- 
ing place, distinction, rank, position, and atten- 
tion, because of our gifts, abilities, wisdom, 
or name, we must use all we have to bless 
the world and to honor God. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ABILITY OF FAITH. 

" Nay, never falter ; no great deed is done 
By falterers who ask for certainty. 
No good is certain but the steadfast mindc 
The undivided will to seek the good ; 
'Tis that compels the elements and wrings 
A human music from the indifferent air. 
The greatest gift the hero leaves his race 
Is to have been a hero. Say we fall ! 
We feed the high tradition of the world, 
And leave our spirit in our children's breast." 

James Russell Lowell. 

Because a thing is hard is no reason why 
we should not do it. The limit of duty is not 
the limit of human ability. We ought to do 
many things which, with our own strength 
alone, we cannot do. There is a realm of faith 
in which a Christian should live which is not 
under the sway of natural laws. The religion 
of Christ counts for little with us if it does 
not enable us to do more than others who 

86 



THE ABILITY OF FAITH. 8/ 

know not its secret. Our righteousness must 
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and 
Pharisees. Our achievements and attainments 
must be of a higher order than those of this 
world's people. The true spirit of Christian 
faith is one of quiet confidence in the pres- 
ence of any duty, any requirement. It knows 
no impossibilities. It staggers at no command. 
It shrinks from no responsibility. It is crushed 
under no burden. 

" So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When duty whispers low, ' Thou must,' 
The youth replies, ' I can ! '" 

Two brothers came to the Master with a 
request that they might have the first place in 
his kingdom. They were thinking of earthly 
rank. The Master answered by asking them if 
they were able to accept his cup and baptism. 
They did not know what he meant, but they 
believed so utterly in him that they calmly 
answered, " We are able." 

This was a committal from which there could 



88 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

be no withdrawal. It implied courage. They 
knew not to what future they were going ; 
what it would cost them to be true to their 
pledge ; but they faltered not. It implied love 
for their Master. This was the secret of it all. 
They could not be separated from him. They 
would follow him anywhere, they loved him so. 
It implied faith. They did not know what the 
cup would be which they had solemnly prom- 
ised to drink ; but they believed in Christ, and 
in his love and wisdom, and were sure he would 
lead them only to what would be the truest 
and the best for them. 

This is the lesson every follower of Christ 
should learn. To every call of the Master, to 
every allotment of duty, to every assignment 
of service, to every laying of the cross at our 
feet, to every requirement that he makes of us, 
our answer should be, "We are able." This 
is easy enough so long as only pleasant things 
are asked of us ; but pleasant things do not 
test discipleship. We must be ready to say it 
when our expectation of honor in following 
Christ is suddenly dashed away and dishonor 



THE ABILITY OF FAITH. 89 

appears in its place, and when it means the 
lifting of the dark cross upon our shoulders 
and bearing it after him. 

Hence the answer of all noble life to every 
call of duty is, " I am able." The question of 
ability is not to be considered. God never 
asks us to do anything we cannot do through 
the strength which he is ready also to give. 
It is thus that God's men have always answered 
God's calls. "Here am I," was the formula in 
the Old Testament times. Thus patriarchs 
and prophets and messengers responded when 
they heard the divine voice calling their names. 
There was no hesitation. They did not linger 
to question their fitness or their ability. In 
New Testament days we find the same obedi- 
ence. St. Paul is a noble illustration. It would 
seem that the motto of his life was, "I am 
ready." That was what he always said, what- 
ever the divine bidding. He was forewarned 
of chains at Jerusalem, and his friends begged 
him not to go. But his answer was, " I am 
ready not to be bound only, but also to die at 
Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." 



90 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Again, he was thinking of Rome, that great 
metropolis of the heathen world, the centre of 
the world's power and splendor, and he wrote, 
" I am ready to preach the gospel to you that 
are at Rome also ; for I am not ashamed of the 
gospel of Christ." He is in a dungeon, a pris- 
oner for Christ, knowing that he will soon die 
as a martyr, and he writes to a friend, "I 
am ready to be offered.'' 

An old missionary seal bore the represen- 
tation of an ox standing between a plough and 
an altar, with the legend, " Ready for either." 
The meaning was that the missionary of Christ 
must be ready either for toil and service, or for 
sacrifice on the altar, if that should be the 
Lord's will. That was the spirit of St. Paul. 
He was ready for life, if Christ so willed ; for 
life to the very extreme of self-denying, self- 
consuming service, if that were the call ; for 
life in chains and in dungeons, if the Mas- 
ter led him to such sufferings. Or, he was 
ready for death, if by dying he could best 
glorify his Lord. This is the only true spirit 
of one who would follow Christ faithfully and 



THE ABILITY OF FAITH. 9 1 

fully. Whatever the call of the Master may 
be, the instant answer of the servant should 
be, " I am ready. I am able." 

There are many things in Christian duty 
which, if our little human strength were all we 
could command, would be impossibilities. Our 
Lord sent out his disciples to heal the sick and 
to raise the dead. They could do neither of 
these things, and they might have said, " We 
cannot cure fevers, nor open blind eyes, nor 
make lame men walk, nor restore the breath of 
life to the dead." Instead of saying this, how- 
ever, their reply really was, " We are able ; " 
and as they spoke in the name of Christ, power 
was in their words and in their touch, and mir- 
acles were wrought by them. St. Paul has a 
remarkable word which illustrates the same 
truth. He is speaking of the endurance of 
hardships. " I have learned," he says, " in 
whatsoever state I am, therein to be con- 
tent." Then a little farther on he says, " I 
can do all things in him that strengtheneth 
me." Here we have the confident " I am 
able," with its secret laid bare — "in him that 
strengtheneth me." 



92 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

This is the law of Christ's kingdom. Noth- 
ing is impossible with God. When he gives 
us a duty, he will give the strength we need to 
do it. When he sends one of his servants on 
an errand, he is ready to give power to perform 
the task, however hard it may be. When there 
is a battle to fight, he will inspire the heart 
and nerve the arm to fight it, so that we may 
become "more than conquerors through him 
that loved us." We are so one with Christ 
that his strength is ours if he send us, and if 
we go in faith. We are ever strongest when 
we are weakest in ourselves, because the meas- 
ure of our conscious weakness is the measure 
of the strength he imparts to us. This is a 
blessed secret. It puts the very power of God 
within our reach. We can do all things in 
Christ. 

There are but two conditions — obedience 
and faith. The strength will not be given 
unless we obey. We must not wait to have it 
given before we will set out — it will not be 
given at all if we do this. No matter how diffi- 
cult, how seemingly impossible, the duty may 



THE ABILITY OF FAITH. 93 

be, we must instantly obey, or no power will be 
forthcoming. It is when we go forward confi- 
dently in the way of duty that the strength is 
given. There must also be faith. We cannot 
do these things ourselves ; there is not suffi- 
cient strength in us. But when we, without 
doubting, begin to do God's will, he will put 
his strength into us. Thus, whatever the task 
he gives, we may say with quiet confidence, 
" We are able." Whatever burden he lays 
upon us, we need not falter, nor fear to try to 
bear it. There is no divine promise that the 
burden will be lifted away, but there is an as- 
surance that we shall be sustained as we walk 
in faith beneath it. 

But this sustaining comes not to him who 
falters and hesitates ; it comes to him only who 
goes forward firmly in the way that is marked 
out for him. It comes not to him who waits 
for the opening of the way before he will set 
out ; the way will open only to the feet of 
him who goes on unflinchingly and unquestion- 
ingly in obedience to the call of duty, regard- 
less of high walls or shut gates or overflowing 



94 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

rivers crossing his path. The floods of the 
Jordan were not cut off while the pilgrim host 
lay back in their camps, nor while they were 
moving down the green banks, nor even while 
they tarried close to the brink, waiting for a 
way to be made for them. It was not until 
the feet of the priests who led the host, moving 
firmly on, trod the very edge of the water, that 
the river opened to allow them to pass through 
to the land of promise. It never would have 
opened to feet that waited on the bank for it to 
open. It is so in all cases. There is a time 
for quiet, patient waiting — when we have done 
all we can. But there is a time when waiting 
is defeat and failure. 

To none of us, if we are living earnestly, can 
life be easy. Duties are too large for our abil- 
ity. Circumstances are hard. Our condition 
has its uncongenialities. Our tasks are more 
than our hands can perform. We are disposed 
to fret and to be discontented, and then to be 
discouraged, and to say we cannot live sweetly 
and beautifully where our lot is set. But this 
is never true. Difficulty never makes impossi- 



THE ABILITY OF FAITH. 95 

bility when we have the power of Christ from 
which to draw. No duties then are ever too 
large. No burdens are ever too heavy. There 
is no environment in which we cannot live 
patiently and sweetly. 

It is in the hard lot that we learn our best 
lessons, and do our best living. Certain birds, 
when they are to be taught to sing new songs, 
are shut up in a darkened cage. Then they 
are caused to hear in the darkness the sweet 
strains which they are to learn. By and by 
they begin to sing what they hear, and they 
are kept singing it over and over until they 
have fully learned it. Then the curtain is 
withdrawn, and now they sing the sweet songs 
in the sunshine. It is thus that God puts us 
sometimes into darkness where the conditions 
are hard. " How can we sing the Lord's songs 
here ? " we ask. But divine help comes to us, 
and grace, and as we try to live gently, pa- 
tiently, and lovingly, and to sing the songs 
of joy, we find we can do it in Christ who 
strengtheneth us. Then there is always bless- 
ing in victoriousness. However great the 



g6 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

cost of noble living may be, the reward is 
always greater than the cost. 

" How very hard it is to be 

A Christian! Hard for you and me, — 
Not the mere task of making real 
That duty up to its ideal, 
Effecting thus, complete and whole, 
A purpose of the human soul — 
For that is always hard to do ; 
But hard, I mean, for me and you 
To realize it more or less, 
With even the moderate success 
Which commonly repays our strife 
To carry out the aims of life. 
1 This aim is greater, 1 you will say, 
* And so more arduous in every way ; ' 
But the importance of their fruits 
Still proves to man, in all pursuits, 
Proportional encouragement." 

Let us never disappoint God by saying in 
any place that we cannot live there beautifully. 
Let us rather accept the hardship, the strug- 
gle, the burden, the trying environment ; and, 
helped by the divine Spirit, let us learn to do 
always the things that please God. "When 



THE ABILITY OF FAITH. g 1 / 

we acquiesce in a trouble," says Fenelon, "it is 
no longer such." Submission takes the bitter- 
ness out of pain, which becomes calamity when 
we resist and chafe. "Peace in this life springs 
from acquiescence even in disagreeable things, 
not from exemption from bearing them." Ac- 
quiescence is the faith that gets the divine 
strength which makes all things possible. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SOURCES OF STRENGTH. 

" O how many hearts are breaking ! 
O how many hearts are aching 
For a loving touch and token, 
For the word you might have spoken." 

Josephine Pollard. 

" God doth suffice ! O thou, the patient one, 
Who puttest faith in him, and none beside, 
Bear thou thy load ; under the setting sun 
The glad tents gleam : thou wilt be satisfied." 

We all need help. None of us are sufficient 
in ourselves for all the exigencies of our con- 
dition. Life is too large for any of us. Its 
duties are too great for our strength. Its 
trials overtax our power of endurance. Its an- 
tagonisms overmaster us. Our own hearts con- 
tain only a little cupful of oil ; and, unless we 
can replenish them from some reserve supply, 
our lamps will go out, leaving us in darkness. 

Yet we are required to meet life victoriously. 
We are not to succumb to its stress or struggle. 

98 



SOURCES OF STRENGTH. 99 

We are told that while our temptations are far 
more than a match for our strength, yet we 
need not fall in them. The task is set for us 
of being more than conquerors in all life's 
trials. We are not to be crushed by sorrow. 
We are to rejoice always, though always en- 
during sore grief. 

It is possible, therefore, for us to receive 
help from without our own little life, to make 
us equal to whatever we may have to bear or 
to endure. It is important that we learn how 
to live so that we can get this help. What are 
the sources from which we may draw strength 
in our time of need ? Evidently they are two- 
fold. We can be helped in a certain way by 
human hands; and we can be helped in the 
largest measure we need by the divine strength. 

In all things the life of Christ is our pattern. 
He lived a human life to show us how to live. 
He did not meet life otherwise than we must 
meet it. He wrought no miracles to make 
trials easier for himself than they would be for 
his followers. In our Lord's experience in 
Gethsemane we have an illustration of the way 



IOO THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

he sought help in time of great need, both from 
the human and the divine source. 

The real agony of Christ's atoning death was 
in Gethsemane, and not on Calvary. It was 
there he fought the battle and won the victory. 
After this there was no more struggle. It is 
worth our while to look closely into our Lord's 
experiences in the Garden, to learn the secrets 
of the victory he won there. It will be ours 
some time to face a sore struggle, a bitter dis- 
appointment, a great trial, a keen sorrow, or to 
take up a heavy cross. How can we prepare 
ourselves for the experience, so as to meet it 
victoriously ? 

The Mexicans whisper over the cradle of a 
new-born babe, " Child, thou art born to suffer; 
endure and hold thy peace!" Courage in 
meeting trial is good. We should learn to take 
up our burden quietly and walk beneath it 
steadfastly. We should learn to endure and 
hold our peace. There are men who do this, 
hardening themselves against pain and sorrow, 
and meeting life's misfortunes and trials sto- 
ically, with solemn firmness. But this is not 



SOURCES OF STRENGTH. 101 

the best way to meet life. It was not thus that 
our Lord met his trials. He did not go to his 
cross stoically. True, he set himself to endure 
and hold his peace. Never, before or since, 
has anguish been borne so victoriously, or has 
the world seen such peace as filled the Redeem- 
er's soul during all the hours of his deepest 
humiliation. But his was not the peace of sto- 
ical hardening ; it was the peace of God which 
kept his heart and mind. 

" Endure and hold thy peace" is not all of 
the lesson. There is something better than 
stoicism. We need not struggle unaided. It 
is not a mark of weakness to accept help in 
hours of great need. Jesus desired to be sus- 
tained as he entered his agony. First, he 
craved and sought the help of human sympa- 
thy. It seems strange to us, at first thought, 
that he, the strong Son of God, could receive 
help from men, and from such men as his 
disciples were. It showed his true humanity. 
It showed, too, how real human friendship was 
to him. We know that his friends received 
help and comfort from him, but we are not so 



102 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

apt to think of him needing them and receiving 
strength from their love. But here we see him 
leaning upon them, wanting them near to him 
while he struggled and suffered, and craving 
their sympathy and tenderness. How sad it 
was, then, that the three chosen disciples whom 
he led into the depths of the Garden that they 
might watch with him and strengthen him by 
their love, slept instead of watching ! , 

In Brittany, among the peasants, they have 
this beautiful legend of the robin. They say 
that when the Saviour moved toward Calvary, 
bearing his cross, with enemies all about him, a 
robin hovered near. And, reckless of the tu- 
mult, the bird flew down and snatched a cruel 
thorn from the Christ's bleeding forehead. 
Then over the robin's bosom flowed the sacred 
blood, tinting with its ruby stream the bird's 
brown plumage. This, the peasants say, was 
the origin of the red spot on the robin's breast. 

" And evermore the sweet bird bore upon its tender 
breast 
The warm hue of the Saviour's blood, a shining seal 
impressed. 



SOURCES OF STRENGTH. 103 

Hence, dearest to the peasant's heart, 'mid birds of 

grove and plain, 
They hold the robin, which essayed to soothe the 

Saviours pain." 

This is only a legend. No bird plucked a 
thorn from that sacred brow. Not by even so 
small a soothing was the Saviour's anguish 
that day mitigated. Yet it was in the power 
of his disciples to have soothed his bitter agony 
immeasurably. But when he came back to 
them after each struggle, hoping to find com- 
fort from their love, they were asleep. They 
failed him, not through carelessness, but 
through faintness. The spirit was willing, but 
the flesh was weak. Had they been stronger, 
it would have been a little easier for Christ to 
endure the cross. Their love would have taken 
at least one thorn from his crown of thorns. 

We all need human friendship. We need it 
specially in our times of darkness. He does 
not well, he lives not wisely, who in the days 
of prosperity neglects to gather about his life a 
few loving friends, who will be a strength to 
him in the days of stress and need. 



104 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Then we should be ready, too, to give the 
strength of our love to those whom we see 
passing into the ways of struggle or sorrow. 
We should not commit the mistake of our 
Lord's friends, failing those who need and ex- 
pect our cheer. There is a deep lesson in the 
words Christ spoke at the last to the men to 
whom he had come three times in vain, craving 
sympathy. " Sleep on now, and take your rest ; 
it is enough, the hour is come." There was no 
need, then, for longer watching, nor could any 
good come of it. The struggle was over, the 
victory had been won without them, and there 
was nothing left for them to do. 

This experience is too common. Continually 
men close beside us are needing sympathy and 
love which we have it in our power to give, but 
which we do not give, letting them pass on un- 
helped. Here in a stanza is told too many a 
life-story : — 

"A heart beat in our midst that vainly tried 
Companionship of other hearts to gain ; 
A soul lived pure and sweet before our eyes, 
Whom our unsympathy caused cruel pain." 



SOURCES OF STRENGTH, 105 

There is a time to show sympathy, when it is 
golden ; when this time has passed, and we have 
only slept meanwhile, we may as well sleep on. 
You did not go near your friend when he was 
fighting his battle alone. You might have 
helped him then. What use is there in your 
coming to him now, when he has conquered 
without your aid ? You paid no attention to 
your neighbor when he was bending under life's 
loads, and struggling with difficulties, obstacles, 
and adversities. You let him alone then. You 
never told him that you sympathized with him. 
You never said a brave, strong word of cheer to 
him in those days. You never scattered even a 
handful of flowers on his hard path. Now that 
he is dead and lying in his coffin, what is the 
use in your standing beside his still form, and 
telling the people how nobly he battled, how 
heroically he lived ; and speaking words of com- 
mendation ? No, no ; having let him go on, un- 
helped, uncheered, unencouraged, through the 
days when he needed so sorely your warm sym- 
pathy, and craved so hungrily your cheer, you 
may as well sleep on and take your rest, letting 



106 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

him alone unto the end. Nothing can be done 
now. Too laggard are the feet that come with 
comfort when the time for giving comfort is 
past. 

"Ah! woe for the word that is never said 

Till the ear is deaf to hear; 
And woe for the lack to the fainting head 

Of the ringing shout of cheer; 
Ah! woe for the laggard feet that tread 

In the mournful wake of the bier. 

A pitiful thing the gift to-day 

That is dross and nothing worth, 

Though if it had come but yesterday, 
It had brimmed with sweet the earth ; 

A fading rose in a death-cold hand, 
That perished in want and dearth." 

Shall we not take our lesson from the legend 
of the robin that plucked a thorn from the Sa- 
viour's brow, and thus sought to lessen his pain, 
rather than from the story of the disciples, who 
slept and failed to give the help which the 
Lord sought from their love ? Thus can we 
strengthen those whose burdens are heavy, 
and whose struggles and sorrows are sore. 



SOURCES OF STRENGTH. IO/ 

So much for the human help. There was an- 
other source of help in our Lord's Garden ex- 
perience. If there had not been, he would have 
been utterly unhelped in all his sore need, for 
human friendship proved inadequate. " Being 
in an agony, he prayed." He sought strength 
from heaven. He crept to his Father's feet 
and made supplication to him and was heard. 

As we watch him in his struggle, we see that 
he grows calmer and quieter as he prays. It is 
evident that divine help comes to him. He is 
sustained and strengthened. At length, when 
he comes from his pleading, his heart is at rest ; 
his pleading has died away in the sweetest and 
divinest of peace. 

We have the same infinite and unfailing 
source of help in our times of great need. 
Human friendship can go with us a little 
way, yet not into the inner depths of our ex- 
perience of sorrow or trial. Human sympathy 
is very sweet, but it is weak, and ofttimes 
sleeps when we most need its cheer and com- 
fort. But when the human ceases to avail, the 
divine is ready. In the face of life's great 



108 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

needs, when no other help can come to us, 
God comes, and from his divine fulness gives 
all that we need. 

The prayer of our Lord in the Garden is a 
model for all who would find help in sore need. 
It was intense in its pleading, but it also 
breathed the most perfect submission, "Not 
my will, but thine be done. ,, No other spirit 
of prayer is pleasing to God, or brings blessing. 
The answer did not come, the cup did not pass 
away, and yet our Lord was really strengthened 
and helped in his praying. At its close, he came 
forth with peace in his heart, ready now to pass 
into the darkness of his cross. 

" How was he helped," some one may ask, 
" when that which he craved was not granted ? " 
He was not spared the sorrow, but he was 
strengthened to endure it. This is God's way 
in much of our praying. We do not know 
what would be a blessing to us. What to our 
thoughts seems bread, might really be a stone 
to us. We may make our requests for things 
we desire, but we should make them humbly 
and submissively. If it is not our Father's 



SOURCES OF STRENGTH. ICX) 

will to grant us what we wish, he gives us 
grace to go without it. If he does not avert 
the trial from which we ask to be spared, he 
strengthens us for meeting it. Thus no true 
prayer ever goes unanswered. The divine help 
never fails. There is a limit to what our human 
friends can do for us : but God is infinite, and 
all his strength is ready to our hand, to help 
us as we need. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BLESSING OF WEAKNESS. 

"No drop but serves the slowly lifting tide, 
No dew but has an errand to some flower, 
No smallest star but sheds some helpful ray." 

We are not accustomed to think of weakness 

as a condition of blessing. We would say, 

" Blessed is strength. Blessed are the strong." 

But Bible beatitudes are usually the reverse of 

what nature would say. " Blessed are they that 

mourn." " Blessed are the meek." " Blessed 

are ye when men shall reproach you." The 

law of the cross lies deep in spiritual life. It 

is by the crucifying of the flesh that the spirit 

grows into beauty. So, " Blessed are the weak, 

for they shall have God's strength," is a true 

scriptural beatitude, although its very words 

are not found in the Bible. 

Weakness is blessed because it insures to us 

no 



THE BLESSING OF WEAKNESS. Ill 

more of the sympathy and help of Christ. 
Weakness ever appeals to a gentle heart. We 
see illustrations of this truth in our common 
human life. What can be more weak and help- 
less than blindness ? Here is a blind child in 
a home. Her condition seems pitiable. She 
gropes about in darkness. She is unaware of 
dangers that may beset her, and cannot shield 
herself from any harm that threatens her. The 
windows through which others see the world 
to her are closed, and she is shut up in dark- 
ness. She is almost utterly helpless. Yet her 
very weakness is her strength. It draws to it- 
self the best love and help of the whole house- 
hold. The mother's heart has no such tender 
thought for any of the other children as for the 
blind girl. The father carries her continually 
in his affection and is ever doing gentle things 
for her. Brothers and sisters strive in all ways 
to supply her lack. The result is that no other 
member of the family is sheltered so safely as 
she is, and that none is half so strong. Her 
very helplessness is the secret of her strength. 
Her closed eyes and outstretched hands and 



112 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

tottering feet appeal resistlessly to all who love 
her, inspiring them to thought and help, as do 
the strength and winning grace of no other one 
in the household. 

This illustrates also the special divine thought 
and care for the weak. All the best things in 
human life are really hints and gleams of the 
divine life. The heart of Christ goes out in 
peculiar interest toward the weak. Paul could 
well afford to keep his " thorn " with its bur- 
dening weakness, because it made him far more 
the object of divine sympathy and help. So 
always weakness makes strong appeal to the 
divine compassion. We think of suffering or 
feebleness as a misfortune. It is not altogether 
so, however, if it makes us dearer and brings 
us nearer to the heart of Christ. Blessed is 
weakness, for it draws to itself the strength of 
God. 

Weakness is blessed, also, because it saves 
from spiritual peril St. Paul tells us that his 
" thorn " was given to him to keep him humble. 
Without it he would have been exalted over- 
much and would have lost his spirituality. We 



THE BLESSING OF WEAKNESS. 113 

do not know how much of his deep insight into 
the things of God, and his power in service for 
his Master, St. Paul owed to this torturing 
" thorn." It seemed to hinder him and it caused 
him incessant suffering, but it detained him in 
the low valley of humility, made him ever con- 
scious of his own weakness and insufficiency, 
and thus kept him near to Christ whose home 
is with the humble. 

Spiritual history is full of similar cases. Many 
of God's noblest servants have carried " thorns " 
in their flesh all their days, but meanwhile they 
have had spiritual blessings and enrichment 
which they never would have had if their cries 
for relief had been granted. We do not know 
what we owe to the sufferings of those who 
have gone before us. Prosperity has not en- 
riched the world as adversity has done. The 
best thoughts, the richest life lessons, the sweet- 
est songs that have come down to us from the 
past, have not come from lives that have known 
no privation, no adversity, but are the fruits of 
pain, of weakness, of trial. Men have cried out 
for emancipation from the bondage of hardship, 



114 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

of sickness, of infirmity, of self-denying neces- 
sity ; not knowing that the thing which seemed 
to be hindering them in their career was the 
very making of whatever was noble, beautiful, 
and blessed in their life. 

There are few people who have not some 
" thorn " rankling in their flesh. In one it is 
an infirmity of speech, in another an infirmity 
of sight, in another an infirmity of hearing. 
Or it may be lameness, or a disease, slow but 
incurable, or constitutional timidity, or excessive 
nervousness, or a disfiguring bodily deformity, 
or an infirmity of temper. Or it may be in 
one's home, which is cold, unloving, and uncon- 
genial ; or it may be in the life of a loved one 
— sorrow or moral failure ; or it may be a bitter 
personal disappointment through untrue friend- 
ship or love unrequited. Who has not his 
" thorn " ? 

We should never forget that in one sense our 
"thorn" is a "messenger of Satan," who de- 
sires by it to hurt our life, to mar our peace, to 
spoil the divine beauty in us, to break our com- 
munion with Christ. On the other hand, how- 



THE BLESSING OF WEAKNESS. 115 

ever, Christ himself has a loving design in our 
"thorn." He wants it to be a blessing to us. 
He would have it keep us humble, save us from 
becoming vain ; or he means it to soften our 
hearts and make us more gentle. He would 
have the uncongenial things in our environ- 
ment discipline us into heavenly-mindedness, 
give us greater self-control, help us to keep our 
hearts loving and sweet amid harshness and 
unlovingness. He would have our pain teach 
us endurance and patience, and our sorrow and 
loss teach us faith. 

That is, our " thorn " may either be a blessing 
to us, or it may do us irreparable harm — which, 
it depends upon ourselves. If we allow it to 
fret us ; if we chafe, resist, and complain ; if we 
lose faith and lose heart, it will spoil our life. 
But if we accept it in the faith that in its ugly 
burden it has a blessing for us ; if we endure it 
patiently, submissively, unmurmuringly ; if we 
seek grace to keep our heart gentle and true 
amid all the trial, temptation, and suffering it 
causes, it will work good, and out of its bitter- 
ness will come sweet fruit. The responsibility 



Il6 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

is ours, and we should so relate ourselves to our 
" thorn " and to Christ, that growth and good, 
not harm and marring, shall come to us from it. 
Such weakness is blessed only if we get the 
victory over it through faith in Christ. 

There is a blessing in weakness, also, be- 
cause it nourishes dependence on God. When 
we are strong, or deem ourselves strong, we 
are really weak, since then we trust in our- 
selves and do not seek divine help. But when 
we are consciously weak, knowing ourselves 
unequal to our duties and struggles, we are 
strong, because then we turn to God and get 
his strength. Too many people think their 
weakness a barrier to their usefulness, or make 
it an excuse for doing little with their life. 
Instead of this, however, if we give it to 
Christ, he will transform it into strength. He 
says his strength is made perfect in weakness ; 
that is, what is wanting in human strength he 
fills and makes up with divine strength. St. 
Paul had learned this when he said he gloried 
now in his weaknesses, because on account of 
them the strength of Christ rested upon him, 



■-■': 



THE BLESSING OF WEAKNESS. 117 

so that, when he was weak, then he was strong 
— strong with divine strength. 

The people who have done the greatest good 
in the world, who have left the deepest, most 
abiding impression upon the lives of others, 
have not been those whom men called the 
strong. Much of the world's best work has 
been done by the weak, by those with broken 
lives. Successful men have piled up vast for- 
tunes, established large enterprises, or won 
applause in some material way; but the real 
influence that has made the world better, en- 
riched lives, taught men the lessons of love, 
and sweetened the springs of society, has come 
largely, not from the strong, but from the weak. 

I walked over a meadow and the air was full 
of delicious fragrance. Yet I could see no 
flowers. There was tall grass waving on all 
sides, but the fragrance did not come from the 
grass. Then I parted the grass and looked 
beneath it, and there, close to the earth, hidden 
out of sight by the showy growths in the 
meadow, were multitudes of lowly little flowers. 
I had found the secret of the sweetness — it 



Il8 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

poured out from these humble hiding flowers. 
This is a picture of what is true everywhere 
in life. Not from the great, the conspicuous, 
the famed in any community, comes the fra- 
grance which most sweetens the air, but from 
lowly lives, hidden, obscure, unpraised, which 
give out the aroma of unselfishness, of kind- 
ness, of gentleness. In many a home it is 
from the room of an invalid, a sufferer, that 
the sweetness comes which fills all the house. 
We know that it is from the cross of Christ 
that the hallowing influence flowed which all 
these centuries has been refining and enriching 
and softening the world's life. So it is always 
— out of weakness and suffering, and from 
crushed, broken lives, comes the blessing that 
renews and heals the world. 



" The healing of the world 
Is in its nameless saints." 



We need only to make sure of one thing, 
that we do indeed bring our weakness to Christ 
and lean on him in simple faith. This is the 
vital link in getting the blessing. Weakness 



THE BLESSING OF WEAKNESS. II9 

itself is a burden ; it is chains upon our limbs. 
If we try to carry it alone we shall only fail. 
But if we lay it on the strong Son of God and 
let him carry us and our burden, going on 
quietly and firmly in the way of duty, he will 
make our very weakness a secret of strength. 
He will not take the weakness from us — that 
is not his promise — but he will so fill it with 
his own power that we shall be strong, more 
than conquerors, able to do all things through 
Christ who strengtheneth us. 

It is a blessed secret — this of having our 
burdening weakness transformed into strength. 
The secret can be found only in Christ, but in 
him it can be found by every lowly, trusting 
disciple. 



CHAPTER XI. 

LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 

I like the man who faces what he must 

With step triumphant and a heart of cheer; 

Who fights the daily battle without fear ; 

Sees his hopes fail, yet keeps unfaltering trust 

That God is God ; that, somehow, true and just, 

His plans work out for mortals ; not a tear 

Is shed when fortune, which the world holds dear, 

Falls from his grasp. Better, with love, a crust, 

Than living in dishonor ; envies not 

Nor loses faith in man ; but does his best, 

Nor even murmurs at his humbler lot ; 

But with a smile and words of hope, gives zest 

To every toiler. He alone is great 

Who, by a life heroic, conquers fate. 

Sarah K. Bolton. 

We ought not to allow ourselves to be beaten 
in living. It is the privilege and duty of every 
believer in Christ to live victoriously. No man 
can ever reach noble character without sore 
cost in pain and sacrifice. All that is beautiful 
and worthy in life must be won in struggle. 

120 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 121 

The crowns are not put upon men's heads 
through the caprice or favoritism of any king ; 
they are the reward of victorious achievement. 
We can make life easy, in a way, if we will, by 
shirking its battles, by refusing to grapple with 
its antagonisms ; but in this way we never can 
make anything beautiful and worthy of our life. 
We may keep alongshore with our craft, never 
pushing out into deep waters ; but then we 
shall never discover new worlds, nor learn the 
secret of the sea. We may spare ourselves 
costly service and great sacrifice, by saving our 
own life from hardships, risks, and waste, but 
we shall miss the blessing which can come only 
through the losing of self. " No cross, no 
crown " is the law of spiritual attainment. 

" He who hath never a conflict hath never a victor's 
palm, 
And only the toilers know the sweetness of rest and 
calm." 

Therefore God really honors us when he sets 
us in places where we must struggle. He is 
then giving us an opportunity to win the best 



122 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

honors and the richest blessings. Yet he never 
makes life so hard for us, in any circumstances, 
that we cannot live victoriously through the 
help which he is ready to give. 

This lesson applies to temptation. Not one 
of us can miss temptation, but we need never 
fail nor fall in it. Never yet was a child of 
God in any terrible conflict with the Evil One 
in which it was not possible for him to over- 
come. There is a wonderful word in one of 
St. Paul's Epistles which we should write in 
letters of gold on our chamber walls: "There 
hath no temptation taken you but such as man 
can bear: but God is faithful, who will not 
suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able ; 
but will with the temptation make also the way 
of escape, that ye may be able to endure it." 

These are sublime assurances. No one need 
ever say, " I cannot endure this temptation, and 
must yield and fall." This is never true. We 
need never fail. Christ met the sorest tempta- 
tions, but he was always victorious ; and now 
this tried and all-conquering Christ is by our 
side as we meet and endure our temptations, 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 1 23 

and we cannot fail when he is with us. It is 
possible, too, for us so to meet temptations as to 
change them into blessings. A conquered sin 
becomes a new strength in our life. We are 
stronger because we have conquered; we are 
braver and more confident for the next battle. 
We are stronger because every conquest gives 
us a new spirit of life; the strength we have 
defeated becomes now part of our own power. 

Victoriousness in speech is among the hard- 
est of life's conquests. The words of St. James 
are true to common experience, when he says 
that the tongue is harder to tame than any kind 
of beasts or birds or creeping things or things 
in the sea; indeed, that no man can tame it. 
Yet he does not say that we need not try to 
tame our tongue. On the other hand he coun- 
sels us to be slow to speak and slow to wrath. 
A Christian ought to learn to control his 
speech. The capacity for harm in angry words 
is appalling. No prayer should be oftener on 
our lips than that in the old psalm : — 

" Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; 
Keep the door of my lips." 



124 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

The hasty word of an uncontrolled moment 
may leave sore wounding and pain in a gentle 
heart, may mar a sweet friendship, may set an 
innocent life on a career of evil. Then the 
hurt in him who speaks ungoverned words is 
scarcely less sore. The pain that quickly fol- 
lows their utterance is terrible penalty for the 
sin. There is ofttimes a cost, too, in results, 
which is incalculable. Lives have been shad- 
owed, down to their close, by words which fell 
in a single flash from unlocked lips. Moses 
was not the only man who has been shut out of 
a land of promise by reason of one unadvised 
word. It is better to suffer wrong in silence 
than to run the risk of speaking in the excite- 
ment of anger. 

One writes: "A single word spoken under 
the influence of passion, or rashly and incon- 
siderately spoken, may prove a source of abiding 
pain and regret ; but the suffering of an act of 
injustice, of wrong, or of unkindness, in a spirit 
of meekness and forbearance, never renders us 
unhappy. The remembrance of a sinful or 
even a hasty word is not infrequently the cause 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 12$ 

of very deep mortification. The reflection that 
our words betrayed a weakness, if not a lack of 
moral and spiritual balance, humiliates us. It 
is a wound to our self-respect, and the con- 
sciousness that the regret is now unavailing 
adds a sting to the pain. But in the feeling 
that in our exercise of the meekness and for- 
bearance inspired by the love of Christ we went 
further than we were bound to go, is not often 
a cause of distress. In a calm review of the 
act we do not feel that we wronged ourselves 
by making too large a sacrifice, or that our 
failure to resent the injury and to attempt to 
retaliate was a mistake. Reason and conscience 
approve the course, and it is a source of satis- 
faction and comfort." 

The lesson applies also to whatever in our 
environment makes life hard. Sometimes we 
find ourselves in places and conditions of living 
in which it seems impossible for us to grow 
into strength and beauty of character. This is 
true of many young people in the circumstances 
in which thev are born, and in which they must 
grow up. They find about them the limitations 



126 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

of poverty. They cannot get the education 
they seem to need to fit them for anything bet- 
ter than the most ordinary career. They envy 
other young people who have so much better 
opportunities. But these limitations, which 
seem to make fine attainments impossible, oft- 
times prove the very blessings through which 
nobleness is reached. Early hardship is the 
best school for training men. Not many of 
those who have risen to the best and truest 
success began in easy places. 

Sometimes it is poor health that appears to 
make it impossible for one to live grandly, at 
least to do much in the world. But this is not 
an insuperable barrier. Many people who have 
been invalids all their life have grown into rare 
sweetness of spirit, and have lived in the world 
in a way to make it better, and to leave influ- 
ences of blessing behind them when they went 
away. Many a "shut in" has made a narrow 
room and a chamber of pain the centre of a 
heavenly life, whose benedictions have gone far 
and wide. At least, there is no condition of 
health in which one cannot live victoriously in 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. \2J 

one's spirit, if not physically. One can be 
brave, cheerful, accepting one's limitations, 
praising God in sickness and in pain, sure 
always that what God wills is best, and that he 
who sings his little song of joy and praise in 
his prison is pleasing God and blessing the 
world. 

"Let sunshine and gladness illumine thy face; 
'Twill help some one else to ' keep sweet.' 
Do troubles oppress thee ? Let God be thy stay ; 
Tis easy to sigh, but 'tis better to pray ; 
Thy sunshine will come in his own blessed way : 
So trustingly try to ' keep sweet.' " 

Sometimes that which makes life hard is in 
one's own nature. Passions are strong; tem- 
per seems uncontrollable; the affections are 
imbittered so that meekness and gentleness 
appear to be impossible ; or the disposition is 
soured so that one finds it hard to be loving 
and sweet. The fault may be in one's early 
training, or the unhappy temper may be an 
inheritance. None of us come into the world 
saints, and ofttimes there are tendencies in 
one's childhood home, or in one's early years, 



128 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

which give the wrong bias to the life. A few 
years later one awakes to find the nature mis- 
shapen, distorted, with the unlovely elements 
prominent and dominant. 

Must one necessarily go through life to the 
end thus marred, with disposition spoiled, quick- 
tempered, with appetites and passions uncon- 
trollable ? Not at all. In all these things we 
may be "more than conquerors through Him 
that loved us." The grace of Christ can take 
the most unlovely life and change it into beauty. 
Saintliness is impossible to none, where the 
grace of God is allowed to work freely and 
thoroughly. 

Many persons find in their own homes the 
greatest obstacle in the way of their becoming 
beautiful and gentle in life. Home ought to be 
the best place in the world in which to grow 
into Christlikeness. There all the influences 
should be inspiring and helpful. It ought to be 
easy to be sweet in home's sacredness. Every- 
thing good ought there to find encouragement 
and stimulus. All home training should be 
towards " whatsoever things are lovely." Home 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 1 29 

should be life's best school. What the conser- 
vatory is to the little plant or flower that finds 
warmth, good soil, and gentle culture there, 
growing into sweet loveliness, home should be 
to the young life that is born into it, and grows 
up within its doors. But not all home-life is 
ideal. Not in all homes is it easy to live sweetly 
and beautifully. Sometimes the atmosphere is 
unfriendly, cold, cheerless, chilling. It is hard 
to keep the heart gentle and kindly in the bit- 
terness that creeps into home-life. 

But no matter how sadly a home may fail in 
its love and helpfulness, how much there may 
be in it of sharpness and bitterness, it is the 
mission of a Christian always to be sweet, to 
seek to overcome the hardness, to live victo- 
riously. This is possible, too, through the help 
of Christ. 

These are only illustrations of this lesson. 
Many of us find ourselves in uncongenial con- 
ditions in which we must stay, at least for the 
time. But, whatever the circumstances, we may 
live Christianly. God will never allow us to be 
put in any place in which, through the help of 



I30 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

his grace, we cannot be good and beautiful 
Christians. Limitations, if we rightly use 
them, only help to make our life more ear- 
nest, more beautiful. A writer calls attention 
to the fact that every musical string is musical 
because it is tied at both ends, and must vibrate 
in limited measure of distance. Cut the string, 
and let it fly loose, and it no more gives out 
musical notes. Its musicalness depends upon 
its limitations. So it is with many human lives ; 
they become capable of giving out sweet notes 
only when they are compelled to move in re- 
straint. The very hardness in their condition 
is that which brings out the best qualities in 
them, and produces the finest results in charac- 
ter and achievement. 

This lesson applies also to experiences of 
misfortune, adversity, sorrow. Paul speaks of 
himself in one place as " sorrowful, yet always 
rejoicing. ,, His life could not be crushed, his 
joy could not be quenched, his songs could not 
be hushed. We must all meet trial in some 
form, but one need never be overwhelmed by it. 
Yet it is very important that we should learn to 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 131 

pass through our sorrow as Christians. Do we 
meet it victoriously ? We cannot help weeping ; 
Jesus wept, and tears are sacred when love for 
our friends and love for Christ mingle in them. 
But our tears must not be rebellious. " Thy 
will be done" must breathe through all our sob- 
bings and cries, like the melody of a sweet song 
in a dark night of storm. 

"Then sorrow whispered gently: * Take 
This burden up. Be not afraid ; 
An hour is short. Thou scarce wilt wake 
To consciousness that I have laid 
My hand upon thee, when the hour 
Shall all have passed ; and gladder then 
For the brief pain's uplifting power, 
Thou shalt but pity griefless men.'" 

Sorrow hurts some lives. It imbitters them. 
It leaves them broken, disheartened, not caring 
more for life. But this is not the Christian way. 
We should accept sorrow, however it may come 
to us, as bringing with it a fragment of God's 
sweet will for us, as bringing also some new 
revealing of divine love. We should meet it 
quietly, reverently, careful not to miss the bless- 



132 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

ing it brings to us. Then we should rise up 
again at once and go on with our work and duty. 
Some hands are left hanging down after grief 
has come. " I do not care any more for life," 
men are sometimes heard to say. " I have no 
interest in my business, since my wife died. I 
want to give it all up." But that is not victo- 
rious living. Sorrow absolves us from no duty, 
from no responsibility. Our work is not finished 
because our friend's work is done. God's plan 
for our life goes on, though for the life dearest 
to us it has ended. We dare not lose even a day 
for sorrow. We rise the morning after the fu- 
neral and find the old tasks waiting for us, clam- 
oring for our coming, and must go forth at once 
to take them up. "Let us dry our tears and 
go on," wrote a Christian man to his friend, after 
a sore bereavement. That is the true spirit. 

We ought to live more earnestly than ever 
after grief has touched our heart. Our life 
has been enriched by the experience. Tears 
leave the soil of the heart more fertile. The 
experience of sorrow teaches us many lessons. 
We are wiser afterward, more thoughtful, better 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 1 33 

fitted to be guide and helper to others, prepared 
especially to be comforters of those whom, after 
our own experience, we find passing through af- 
fliction. Instead, therefore, of letting our hands 
hang down in despairing weakness, we should 
rise up quickly, fresh from our new anoint- 
ing, and hasten on to the duty that waits for 
us. 

Thus all Christian life should be victorious. 
We should never allow ourselves to be defeated 
in any experience that may come to us. With 
Christ to help us, we need never fail, but may 
ever be more than conquerors. Even the things 
that seem to be failures and defeats in our lives, 
through the love and grace of Christ — if only 
we are faithful — will prove in the end to be suc- 
cesses and victories. Many a good man fails in 
a worldly sense, and yet in the moral and spirit- 
ual realm is more than conqueror. There is no 
real failure but in sin. Faithfulness to Christ 
is victory, even when all is lost. 

" All things fulfil their purpose, low or high : 
There is no failure ; death can never mar 
The least or greatest of the things that are ; 



134 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Until our work is done, it matters not how nigh 
May be the night time that is never far, 
That long ere sunset lights the evening star, 

That throws its still shadow up into the sky. 

To-day shall end what yesterday begun; 

What we are planning others yet may build ; 

The leaves may wither, but the tree shall grow 
And though, at last, we leave our work undone, 

Our life will not the less be all fulfilled; 

Our work will all be even finished so." 



CHAPTER XII. 

INTERPRETERS FOR GOD. 

" O Earth ! thou hast not any wind that blows 
Which is not music ; every weed of thine 
Pressed rightly flows in aromatic wine. 
And every humble hedge-row flower that grows, 
And every little brown bird that doth sing, 
Hath something greater than itself, and bears 
A living word to every living thing, 
Albeit it hold the message unawares." 

God wants interpreters. He does not walk 
the earth in form that we can see, nor speak to 
us in words that we can hear. Yet he is al- 
ways with us, and he is always speaking to us. 
Once he sent his only begotten Son, and men 
saw his face — a face like their own, and heard 
his voice, a voice like their own. Now he has 
many sons ; and in all of these, just in the 
measure in which they are true, God's face 
beams its love upon the world, and God's voice 
speaks its message to the world. 

i3S 



136 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Every one of us has something to do in in- 
terpreting God to men. If we are his friends, 
the " secret of the Lord " is with us. Not a 
secret, however, which we are to keep to our- 
selves, but one which it is ours to declare. 
We are in this world to reveal God, and to 
make God's words plain to others. 

We have many illustrations of this in the 
Scriptures. For example, twice in the story of 
Joseph do we find him acting as an interpre- 
ter for God. Two of his fellow-prisoners had 
dreams. Joseph told them the meaning of the 
dreams. Pharaoh had a dream which Egypt's 
wise men could not interpret, and Joseph was 
brought from his prison to tell its meaning. 
In both these cases the dreams were words of 
God, whose interpretation it was important 
to learn. In the case of the prisoners, the 
dreams were forecastings of the future of the 
two men. In the case of Pharaoh, they were 
revealings which the king needed to under- 
stand, in order that he might make provision 
for his people in the famine that was coming. 
It would have been a great calamity for Egypt 



INTERPRETERS FOR GOD. 1 37 

and for the world if he had not learned the 
meaning of what God had spoken in his ear 
in the visions of the night. But without an 
interpreter he never could have known. 

So we all stand in this world amid mysteri- 
ous writings which we cannot read, having our 
dreams and visions, whose meanings we cannot 
ourselves interpret. Yet these writings and 
these visions are really God's words to us, 
divine teachings which we ought to under- 
stand, whose meanings it is intended we should 
find out. They have their lessons for us, which 
we need to know. They hold messages of 
comfort for our sorrows, of guidance for our 
dark paths, of instruction for our ignorance, of 
salvation for our perishing souls. We can- 
not live as we should live until we learn the 
meaning of these divine words. We need 
interpreters. 

Take the little child. It comes into the 
world knowing nothing. On all sides are won- 
derful things — in nature, in its own life, in 
other lives, in books, in art, in providence. 
But the writings are all mysterious. The child 



I38 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

understands nothing. Yet it is here to learn 
all it can of these writings. They are words of 
God which concern its own welfare. The child 
needs interpreters. And we are all only chil- 
dren of various growths. Life is full of enig- 
mas for us. We bend over the Bible and find 
texts we cannot understand. There are mys- 
teries in providence ; they come into every life 
at some time. Yet in these obscure texts and 
these dark providences there are words of God 
hidden, words of love, of wisdom, of mercy. 
We all need interpreters to read off for us the 
mysterious handwriting of God. 

Then it is our office as Christians to be in- 
terpreters for others. Joseph found the two 
prisoners sad, and his heart was touched with 
sympathy. He became eager to comfort them. 
This revealed the true and noble spirit in him. 
He had a warm, gentle heart. No one can 
ever be greatly useful in this world who does 
not enter into the world's experiences of need. 
Christ was moved with compassion when he 
saw human pain and sin. At once his love 
went out toward the sufferer, and he desired to 



INTERPRETERS FOR GOD. 1 39 

impart help. Wherever we go we see sad 
faces which tell of unrest, of broken peace, of 
unsatisfied longings, of unanswered questions, 
of deep heart hungerings. Sometimes it is 
fear that writes its lines on the pale cheeks. 
Sometimes it is perplexity which darkens the 
features. Sometimes it is baffled longing. 
Here it is desire to look into the future ; again 
it is eagerness to learn more of God. 

We are sent to be interpreters, each in his 
own way, and in the things which he knows. 
All the rich knowledge of the world has come 
down to us through human interpreters. All 
along the ages there have been men who have 
climbed to the mountain tops, where they saw 
the earliest gleams of light, while it was yet 
dark in the valleys of life below, and have then 
come down and spoken to men of what they 
saw. There have been seers in every age, 
gifted to look upon the scrolls of truth and 
read off the words written there. The sci- 
entific knowledge we have has come to us 
through many interpreters who have learned to 
read God's words in nature. To most people 



140 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

nature's wonderful writings mean almost noth- 
ing, — flowers, trees, rivers, lakes, seas, moun- 
tains, the splendor of the skies, — people walk 
amid these divine works without awe, seeing 
nothing to touch their hearts or thrill their 
spirits. As Mrs. Browning says : 

" Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God ; 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes ; 
The rest sit round it, and pick blackberries." 

But there have been interpreters — men with 
eyes which saw, with ears which heard, and they 
have told us something of the meaning of the 
wonderful things God has written in his works. 
Or take the literature of the world. It is 
the harvest of many centuries of thought. In 
every age there have been men who have 
looked into truth with deeper, clearer vision 
than their fellows, and heard whispers of God's 
voice ; then coming forth from their valleys of 
silence they have told the world what they 
heard. Take the treasures of spiritual truth 
which we possess ; how have they come to us ? 
Not through any scrolls brought from heaven 



INTERPRETERS FOR GOD. 141 

by angels, but through human interpreters. 
God took Moses up into the mount and talked 
with him, as a man talks with his friend, reveal- 
ing to him great truths about his being and 
character, and giving him statutes and laws for 
the guidance of men ; then Moses became an 
interpreter to the world of the things which 
God had spoken to him. David was an inter- 
preter for God. God drew him close to his 
own heart and breathed heavenly songs into 
his soul; then David went forth and struck his 
harp and sang — and the music is breathing 
yet through all the world. John was an inter- 
preter for God. He lay in Christ's bosom, 
heard the beatings of that great heart of love, 
and learned the secrets of friendship w r ith his 
Lord ; then he passed out among men and told 
the world what he had heard and felt and seen ; 
and the air of this earth has been warmer ever 
since, and more of love has been beating in 
human hearts. Paul was an interpreter for 
God. God took him away from men and re- 
vealed himself to him, opened to him the mys- 
tery of redemption as to no other man in all 



142 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Christian history ; and Paul wrote the letters of 
his which we have, which have been marvellous 
in their influence all these Christian centuries. 

But not alone have these inspired men been 
God's interpreters ; many others since have 
taken up the word of God and have found new 
secrets, blessed truths, precious comforts, that 
had lain undiscovered before, and have spoken 
out to men what they have found. Evermore 
new light is breaking from the Bible. 

God gives to every life that he sends into this 
world some message of its own to give out to 
others. To one it is a new revealing of science. 
Kepler spoke of himself as thinking over God's 
thoughts, as he discovered the paths of the 
stars and traced out the laws of the heavens. 
To the poet God gives thoughts of beauty, re- 
vealings of the inner life, which he is to inter- 
pret to the world ; and the world is richer, 
sweeter, and better for hearing his messages. 
Even to the lowliest man God whispers some 
secret of truth which he wants that man to im- 
part by word or act to others. We cannot all 
make books, or write poems or hymns which 



INTERPRETERS FOR GOD. 1 43 

shall bless men ; but if we live near the heart 
of Christ there is not one of us into whose ear 
Christ will not speak some fragment of truth, 
some revealing of grace and love, or to whom 
he will not give some experience of comfort in 
sorrow, some glimpse of light in darkness, some 
glimmering of heaven's glory in the midst of 
this world's care. God forms a close personal 
friendship with each of his children, and tells 
each some special secret of love which no other 
ever has learned before. That now is your mes- 
sage — God's own peculiar word to you; and 
you are God's prophet to forth-tell it again to 
the world. Each one should speak out what 
God has given him to speak. If it be but a 
single word, it will yet bless the earth. Not to 
speak it will leave the world a little poorer. 

Says Mozoomdar: "If the flowers should 
no longer be in the world, if the sun should no 
longer shine, how great would be our distress ! 
If the bird no longer twittered on the budding 
bough of the tree, how greatly we should miss 
it ! Everything is so closely connected with us 
that we cannot do without it. Everything has 



144 TIIE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

its corresponding fact in human nature, and 
every little thing has a destiny, a message. 
Orientals believe that each man and woman has 
a message, and the man or woman who accom- 
plishes it is a true man or a true woman, but one 
who does not is an anomaly — one to be pitied." 
We dare not hide in our heart the message 
that God gives us to utter to the world. Sup- 
pose that Joseph, knowing by divine teaching 
the meaning of Pharaoh's dreams, had remained 
silent, think what his silence would have cost 
the world. Or suppose that John, having leaned 
upon the Lord's breast and having learned the 
inner secrets of his love, had gone back to his 
fishing, after the ascension, and had refused or 
failed to be an interpreter for Christ, what would 
the world have lost ! If one only of the million 
flowers that bloom in the summer days, in the 
fields and gardens, refused to bloom, hiding its 
gift of beauty, the world would be a little less 
lovely for the failure of the one flower. If but 
one of the myriad stars in the heavens should 
refuse to shine some night, keeping its beam 
locked in its own breast, the night would be a 



INTERPRETERS FOR GOD. 1 45 

little darker. Every human life that fails to 
hear its message and learn its lesson, or that 
fails to interpret its own secret, keeping it locked 
in the silence of the breast, in some measure 
impoverishes the earth, and withholds that 
which would have enriched earth's life. But 
every life, even the lowliest, that learns its word 
from God and then interprets it to others, adds 
something, at least, to the world's sum of bless- 
ing and good. We need only to be pure in our 
purpose and strong in our struggle, and all life 
shall be purer and stronger through our faith- 
fulness. 

''There's never a rose in all the world 
But makes some green spray sweeter ; 
There's never a wind in all the sky 
But makes some bird wing fleeter ; 
There's never a star but brings to heaven 
Some silver radiance tender ; 
And never a rosy cloud but helps 
To crown the sunset splendor ; 
No robin but may thrill some heart, 
His dawnlight gladness voicing. 
God gives us all some small sweet way, 
To set the world rejoicing. 



146 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

It is our mission then to live near the heart 
of Christ, that we may catch the spirit of his 
life, and then to go forth among the people to 
interpret to them the things of Christ which we 
have learned. Then it is not our words that 
the world needs, so much as the sweet life that 
we can live. Let us get into our heart the word 
and spirit and love of Christ, and then interpret 
in our daily walk among men the beauty of 
Christ. 

" The dear Lord's best interpreters 
Are humble human souls ; 
The gospel of a life 

Is more than books or scrolls. 

From scheme and creed the light goes out — 

The saintly fact survives ; 
The blessed Master none can doubt 

Revealed in holy lives. 11 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SECRETS OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE. 

" We are but sketches of what one day, 
After the hard lines pass away, 
God, the Designer, would have us to be; 
Only in charcoal, rude and rough, 
The mere cartoons of his greater skill." 

We all want to make our lives beautiful. At 
least, one who has no such desire is not living 
worthily. We are God's children, and should 
live as those who have heaven's glory in their 
souls. We have within us immortal possibilities, 
and he is as one dead who does not strive to 
realize the beauty that is folded up in his life. 

A beautiful life is one that fulfils its mission. 
" Every man's life is a plan of God," is a famil- 
iar saying. One who attains that for which 
he was made, lives beautifully, however lowly 
his life may be. Completeness is beauty. The 

147 



148 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

meaning of the root word for "sin" is, missing 
the mark. The aim is to keep God's command- 
ments, to do God's will, to realize God's pur- 
pose. We miss the mark, and the beauty is 
marred. "Transgression " is a like word, mean- 
ing stepping out of the path, over the bound- 
ary ; that is, not walking as God directs, failing 
to live according to the divine plan and pattern. 
"Iniquity" has also a similar suggestion, — un- 
equalness, injustice, not according to the law of 
right, and therefore unbeautiful. 

Thus the words which, describe wrong-doing 
all suggest marring, spoiling, the failure to ful- 
fil the perfect design. It is as if an architect 
were to make a plan for a perfect building, and 
the builder, through ignorance or carelessness, 
should spoil the house, not making it like the 
plan. The building is not beautiful when fin- 
ished, because it is not what the architect in- 
tended it to be. A life which fulfils the divine 
Architect's purpose, whether it be great and 
conspicuous, or lowly and obscure, is beautiful. 
We need not seek to do large things; the 
greatest thing for any human life in this world 



SECRETS OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE. 1 49 

is God's will for that life. That is the only 
true beauty. 

There are some special words which may be 
said to hold the secret of beauty in a life. One 
is " victoriousness." Many people let themselves 
be defeated almost habituallv. It begins in 
childhood. The lessons are hard, and the child 
does not master them. It costs exertion to 
succeed in the games, and the boy indolently 
concludes that he cannot win, and does not do 
his best. The girl finds that she cannot play 
her exercises on the piano without a great deal 
of tiresome practice, and lets herself be de- 
feated. It is hard to restrain temper and appe- 
tite in youth, and the young man gives up the 
struggle, and yields to the indulgence. Thus 
at the very be^innins: the battle is lost, and 
ofttimes all life afterward carries the debilitat- 
ing: effect. Always dutv is too large, and les- 
sons are too hard, and discipline is too severe, 
and passion is too strong. To its close the life 
is weak, never victorious, unable to cope with 
its environment. It is a fatal thing to form in 
youth the habit of permitting one's self to be 



ISO THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

defeated. Life then never can be what it might 
have become. 

On the other hand, when the lesson of being 
victorious is learned in childhood, all is different. 
Studies are mastered ; exercises are played over 
a hundred times, if need be, till they are played 
accurately; games are not indolently lost for 
want of exertion. Later in life, when the les- 
sons are larger and the discipline is sorer, and 
the tasks require more labor, and the battles 
test the soul to its last particle of strength, the 
habit of overcoming still avails and the life 
is ever victorious. The thought of giving up is 
never entertained for a moment. The Indians 
say that, when a man kills a foe, the strength of 
the slain enemy passes into the victor's arm. 
In the weird fancy lies a truth. Each defeat 
leaves us weaker for the next battle, but each 
conquest makes us stronger. 

Pitiable indeed is the weakness of the van- 
quished spirit in the face of temptation, duty, 
toil, or sorrow. But it is possible for us always 
to be overcomers. We may meet duty with a 
quiet confidence that shall enable us to do it 



SECRETS OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE. 151 

well. We may be victorious in our struggles 
with temptation, keeping ourselves unspotted 
from the world. We may so relate ourselves to 
our conditions and our circumstances that we 
shall be masters, not slaves ; that our very hin- 
drances shall become helps to us, inspirers of 
courage and persistence. 

" Stone walls do not a prison make." 

Nothing makes a prison to a human life but 
a defeated, broken spirit. The bird in its cage 
that sings all the while is not a captive. God 
puts his children in no conditions in which 
he does not mean them to live sweetly and vic- 
toriously. So in any circumstances we may 
be "more than conquerors through him that 
loved us." 

We may be victorious also in sorrow. If we 
are not, we are living below our privilege as 
Christians. We sin when we lie crushed, refus- 
ing to be comforted in our grief. Sorrow hurts 
us if we meet it with resistance and rebellion. 
The secret of blessing in trial lies in acquies- 
cence. This takes out of it its bitterness and 



152 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

its poison, and makes it a blessing to us. One 
writes of sorrow: — 

" ' Look thou beyond the evening sky,' she said, 
' Beyond the changing splendors of the day ; 
Accept the pain, the weariness, the dread, — 
Accept and bid me stay.' 

I turned and clasped her close with sudden strength ; 

And slowly, sweetly, I became aware, 
Within my arms God^ angel stood at length, 

White-robed and calm and fair. 

And now I look beyond the evening star, 
Beyond the changing splendor of the day ; 

Knowing the pain he sends more precious far, 
More beautiful than they ! " 

The lesson of victoriousness is one of the 
secrets of a beautiful life. It makes us master 
everywhere and in all things. Come what may, 
we are not overcome. Nothing hurts us; all 
things help us. The common antagonisms of 
life build themselves into a ladder, up which 
we climb step by step, nearer God and nearer 
heaven. Christ was victorious in his life, and 
so may we be if we put our feet over in the 
prints of his shoes. 



SECRETS OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE. 1 53 

Another of the secrets of a beautiful life is 
found in the word "serving." Our Lord gave 
us the full truth when he said of his own mis- 
sion, that he came, "not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister." When we understand the 
meaning of this word, and then relate ourselves 
to all others about us in accordance with this 
standard, we begin to be a blessing to every- 
one. Our thought then ever is, not what we 
can get of pleasure, of help, of profit, of com- 
fort, of good in any form, from others, but what 
we can give to them. True loving is not re- 
ceiving, but giving. The Christlike desire 
toward our friends is not that we may get some- 
thing from them, that they may be of use to us, 
but that in some way we may be a blessing to 
them, may do them good. This feeling will re- 
strain us from ever harming another in any 
way. It will keep us from offering temptation 
to another. It will make us watchful of our 
influence over others, lest in some way we cast 
a hurtful instead of a healing shadow upon 
them. It will also temper our demands of 
others, since we are seeking, not to be minis- 



154 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

tered unto, but to minister. It will turn the 
whole thought of our life from the mere seek- 
ing of happiness to the doing of good to others, 
the giving of happiness. 

" Life were not worth the living, 
If no one were the better 
For having met thee on the way, 
And known the sunshine of thy stay. 
Give as thy God is giving; 
To no one be a debtor! 
So hearts shall faster beat for thee, 
And faces beam thy light to see." 

Some people have a great deal of trouble 
looking after their rights, seeing that no one 
wrongs them, that they always get proper honor 
and attention from others, and that no injustice 
is ever done to them. We hear echoes of this 
human striving breaking out from the heart of 
certain great and splendid pageants, where the 
grand participants contend for precedence in 
rank, for degree of nobility, at the table or in 
the procession. We find it in much lowlier 
places, in society, and in the common walks, in 
the clamor for the highest distinction or for 



SECRETS OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE. I 55 

honor among men. We are spared all such 
trouble if we have this law of serving deep in 
our hearts. Our only care then is that we do 
not ourselves wrong others, even if they have 
treated us unjustly or unkindly. 

The highest rank with Christ is the fullest, 
truest serving. When we have learned this 
lesson, we are prepared to be a blessing to 
every life that touches ours, even for a moment, 
in passing; as when two ships meet, speak each 
other, and move each on its own way. Our 
entire attitude toward others is changed ; we 
look upon every human being as one who pos- 
sibly needs something we have to give, one to 
whom we have an errand of love, one whom we 
must wish God-speed, one for whom we must 
at least breathe a whispered prayer. 

This is the heart of Christlikeness as inter- 
preted in practical living. It is the real secret 
of happiness too ; for it is more blessed to 
give than to receive — not more pleasant to na- 
ture, but more blessed. We vex ourselves then 
no longer about the lack of gratitude in others, 
about the exact balance of reciprocal attention 



156 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

or favor, about whose turn it is to call, or 
write, or whose place it is to take the first step 
toward reconciliation. Love keeps no debit 
and credit accounts, and seeks only to be 
always first in serving. 

Another secret of sweet and happy Christian 
life is in learning to live by the day. It is the 
long stretches that tire us. We think of life 
as a whole, running on for years, and it seems 
too great for us. We cannot carry this load 
until we are threescore and ten. We cannot 
fight this battle continually for half a century. 
But really there are no long stretches. Life 
does not come to us in lifetimes ; it comes only 
a day at a time. Even to-morrow is never ours 
till it becomes to-day, and we have nothing 
whatever to do with it, but to pass down to it 
a fair and good inheritance in to-day's work 
well done and to-day's life well lived. 

It is a blessed secret, this of living by the 
day. Any one can carry his burden, however 
heavy, till nightfall. Any one can do his work, 
however hard, for one day. Any one can live 
sweetly, quietly, patiently, lovingly, and purely 



SECRETS OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE. 1 57 

till the sun goes down. And this is all that 
life really ever means to us, — just one little 
day. "Do to-day's duty, fight to-day's tempta- 
tion, and do not weaken and distract yourself 
by looking forward to things you cannot see, 
and could not understand if you saw them." 
God gives us nights to shut down the curtain 
of darkness on our little days. We cannot see 
beyond, and we ought not to try to see beyond. 
Short horizons make life easier, and give us 
one of the blessed secrets of brave, true, holy 
living. 

These are some of the secrets of a beautiful 
life. We ought not to be content to live other- 
wise than beautifully. We can live our life 
only once. We cannot go over it again to cor- 
rect its mistakes or amend its faults. We 
ought therefore to live it well. And to do this 
we must begin at the beginning, and make 
every day radiant as it passes. Lost days must 
always remain blanks in the records, and stained 
days must carry their stains. Beautiful days 
make beautiful years, and beautiful years make 
a beautiful life at its close. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

HELPING BY PRAYER. 

" Yes, pray for whom thou lovest ; if uncounted wealth were thine — 
The treasures of the boundless deep, the riches of the mine — 
Thou couldst not to thy cherished friends a gift so dear impart, 
As the earnest benediction of a deeply prayerful heart." 

Friendship which does not pray lacks a 
most sacred element. It leaves God out, and 
that is leaving out friendship's best possibilities 
of blessing. Earth's sweetest joy needs heaven 
to make it complete. Wisely has it been writ- 
ten, " Pray for whom thou lovest ; thou wilt 
never have any comfort of his friendship for 
whom thou dost not pray." Certain it is, at 
least, that truest, deepest, realest comfort can- 
not come to us from a friend whose name we 
do not speak to God in love's pleading. The 
holiest experience of friendship is in commu- 
nion with God. Only to God can the heart's 
most sacred longings for a friend be uttered. 

158 



HELPING B Y PR A YER. I 59 

" Yes, pray for whom thou loves t ; thou may est vainly, 
idly seek 

The fervid thoughts of tenderness by feeble words to 
speak. 

Go, kneel before thy Father's throne, and meekly, hum- 
bly there 

Ask blessing for the loved one in the silent hour of 
prayer. 

And should thy flowery path of life become a path of 

pain, 
The friendship formed in bonds like these thy spirit 

shall sustain ; 
Years may not chill, nor change invade, nor poverty 

impair 
The love that grew and flourished at the holy time of 

prayer.'" 

God has put it in our power to help each 
other in many ways, — sometimes by deeds that 
lift away burdens, sometimes by words that 
inspire courage and strength, sometimes by 
sympathy that halves sorrow ; but there is no 
other way in which we can serve our friends so 
wisely, so effectively, so divinely, as by inter- 
cession for them. Our hands are clumsy and 
unskilful, and ofttimes hurt the life we would 



l60 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

heal with our touch, or strengthen and uphold 
with our strength ; but in prayer we can reach 
our friend through God, and God's hand is in- 
finitely gentle, and never hurts a life. We lack 
wisdom, and ofttimes the help we give is un- 
timely or unwise. We would lift away burdens 
that God wants our friend to carry. We would 
make the way easy for him when God has made 
it hard for his own good, for the development 
of his powers. We would save our friend from 
hardship or self-denial, or hold him back from 
perilous duty or exhausting service, when these 
are the very paths in which God would lead 
him — the paths to honor, to larger usefulness, 
to nobler life. Ofttimes our love is short- 
sighted. We think we are helping our friend, 
when really we are hindering him in the things 
that most deeply concern his life. But we can 
pray and ask God to help him, not in our way, 
but in his own way, and God's help is never 
unwise nor untimely. He never lifts away a 
load which our friend would be the better for 
carrying. He never does things for him which 
he would better be left to do for himself, nor 



HELPING BY PRAYER. l6l 

spares him hardness or suffering which will 
make him more a man. 

There are times, too, when we can help with 
our love in no other way but by prayer. The 
friend is beyond our reach, or his experiences 
of need are such that we can do nothing for 
him. Human capacity for helpfulness is very 
small. We can give a piece of bread when one 
is hungry, or a cup of cold water when one is 
thirsty, or raiment when one is naked, or medi- 
cine when one is sick. But in the deeper needs 
of life we can do nothing. Our words are only 
mockeries. Yet we can pray, and God can send 
his own help to the heart in any experience. 

Thus we get hints of the truth that the no- 
blest, divinest way of helping our friends is 
by prayer. It follows, therefore, that we sin 
against them when we do not help them in this 
best and truest of all ways — by praying for 
them. The parent who does not pray for a 
child, whatever else he may do for him, sins 
against the child. Whoever fails to pray for 
one he loves fails in the most sacred duty of 
love, because he withholds love's best help. " A 



1 62 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

prayerless love may be very tender, and may 
speak murmuring words of sweetest sound ; but 
it lacks the deepest expression and the noblest 
music of speech. We never help our dear ones 
so well as when we pray for them." 

It is pleasant to think that this best of all 
service for others we can render even when un- 
able to do any active work on their behalf. A 
"shut in" who can run no errands and lift no 
burdens and speak no words of cheer to busy 
toilers and sore strugglers in the great world, 
can yet pray for them, and God will send truest 
help. Said a good man, when laid aside from 
active service : " One thought has assumed a new 
reality in my mind of late, as an offshoot of my 
useless life. When a man can do nothing else, 
he can add his little rill to the great river of 
intercessory prayer which is always rolling up 
to the throne of God. The river is made up of 
such rills, as the ocean is of drops. A praying 
man can never be a useless man." 

Again the same writer says : " You do not 
know how my soul longs to get into closer 
friendship with Christ, and to pray — which is 



HELPING BY PRAYER. 1 63 

about the only mode of usefulness left to me — 
as he prayed. To touch the springs of the uni- 
verse as he touched them ! One can almost feel 
the electric thrill of it." We cannot tell what 
intercessory prayer does for the world — for our 
own lives. 



a 



More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of." 



It is well, also, that we think carefully of the 
things we ask for our friends. There is the 
same danger that exists in prayers for ourselves 
— that we press only our own will for them, 
and request for them only things of an earthly 
kind. There is a good model for all intercession 
in the way Epaphras prayed for his friends in 
Colosse : " Always laboring fervently for you 
in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and com- 
plete in all the will of God." It is not merely 
health and prosperity and success in life that we 
are to ask for those we love, but that God's will 
may be done in them, and that they may ful- 
fil his plan and purpose for them. 

The mother's prayer for her children should 



164 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

not be, first, that they may win worldly honor, 
but that they may be. complete in all God's will, 
may be what God made them to be. The best 
place they can reach in this world is that for 
which God designed them when he gave them 
their being. 

Ofttimes we are led to pray for our friends 
when they are in some trouble. For example, 
one we love is sick. We are touched with sym- 
pathy, and go to God with our heart's burden. 
What shall our prayer be ? That our friend 
may recover ? Yes, that is love's right and 
natural prayer, and we may ask this very ear- 
nestly. Jesus prayed three times that his own 
cup of sorrow might pass. But that must not 
be all of our prayer. It would be very sad if 
our friend were to get well, and were not to 
take some blessing out of his sick-room with 
him when he leaves it. Therefore we are to 
pray that he may be enriched in spiritual expe- 
rience ; that he may be made a better man 
through his illness ; that he may be brought 
into closer relation with Christ ; that his life 
may be purified; that he may be made more 



HELPING BY PRAYER. 1 65 

thoughtful, gentle, unselfish, unworldly, more 
like Christ ; in a word, that he may be made 
perfect and complete in all the will of God. 

It may become needful to qualify the prayer 
that our friend shall recover. It may be God's 
will that he should now go home. We may 
still give full vent to love's yearning that he 
shall get well; but at the close of our intense 
supplication we must submit it all to God's wis- 
dom in the refrain, " Nevertheless, not as I will, 
but as thou wilt." If love be true, it is always 
the very best thing that we ask for our dear 
ones when we pray for them ; and the best — 
God's best — for them may be, not longer life 
in this world, but heaven, the crowning of their 
life in immortal glory and blessedness. 

Or our friend may be in some trouble. He 
may be staggering under a heavy load, and it 
may seem to us that the best blessing which 
could come to him would be the lifting away of 
the load. But, as we begin to pray, we remem- 
ber that the truest and most loving prayer for 
him must be that he shall stand perfect and 
complete in all God's will. Possibly his load is 



1 66 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

part of God's will to bring out the best that is 
in him. 

In all our praying for our friends we are to 
think first of their higher, spiritual good. We 
are to seek for them above all things that they 
may grow into all the beauty of perfect Chris- 
tian character. It is a poor, superficial friend- 
ship which desires chiefly our friend's present 
ease and mere earthly good. It is asking for 
him a stone instead of bread, a scorpion in- 
stead of an egg f or a serpent instead of a fish. 
Those who seek for their friends only earthly 
things, are choosing for them only the husks, 
and omitting to choose for them the golden 
grain which would feed their immortal nature. 
We sin against our loved ones when we seek 
for them merely the things our own frail, short- 
sighted judgment may desire for them. Love 
is true only when it rises into heavenly heights, 
and craves, for those that are dear, the things of 
God's own blessed, perfect will. This is not 
always easy. It is hard for us to say, " Thy 
will be done," when it means that our loved 
one must endure sore pain, or walk in deep 



HELPING BY PRAYER. 1 67 

shadows, or be humbled under God's mighty 
hand. 

But, whether for our friends or for ourselves, 
we dare not in prayers press our own wishes 
against God's. " Even though it be a cross 
that raiseth" must be our cry for our dearest 
as well as for ourselves. The standard of plead- 
ing must be the same. And some day we shall 
see and know that our love was truest when it 
asked even pain and loss for one who was dear, 
because it was God's will. 

" I sometimes think God's heart must ache, 
Listening to all the sad, complaining cries, 
That from our weak, impatient souls arise. 

Because we do not see that for our sake 
He answers not, or answers otherwise 
Than seems the best to our tear-blinded eyes. 

This is love's hardest task, to do hard things 

For love's own sake, then bear the murmurings 
Of ignorance, too dull to judge aright 
The love that rises to this wond'rous height 

He knows we have not yet attained ; and so 
He wearies not, but bears complaint and moan, 
And shields each willing heart against his own, 

Knowing that some glad day we too shall know." 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE COST OF PRAYING. 

" Say, what is prayer, when it is prayer indeed ? 
The mighty utterance of a mighty need. 
The man is praying who doth press with might 
Out of his darkness into God's own light." 

It seems easy to pray. It is only speaking a 
few simple words into our Father's ear. We 
are not accustomed to think of praying as some- 
thing hard. Yet sometimes it is only at sore 
cost that we can pray. Many of the things we 
ask for can come to us only through struggle 
and tears. 

The basis of all praying is the submission of 
the whole life to the will of God. We cannot 
pray at all unless we make this full surrender. 
There is a story of a young naval officer who 
was taken prisoner. Brought into the presence 
of the commandant of the victorious squadron, 
he reached out his hand to him, his sword yet 

1 68 



THE COST OF PRAYING. 1 69 

hanging by his side. " Your sword first," said 
his captor. No greeting or salutation could be 
accepted until surrender was complete. Nor 
can we approach God in acceptable prayer until 
we have altogether submitted our will to his. 
All our prayers must be based upon " Thy will, 
not mine, be done/' It costs much to make 
this surrender. It means a giving up of our 
own will and our own way. When it is sincere 
and real, every kneeling at Christ's feet is a 
laying of one's self upon the altar anew in entire 
devotion. We can keep nothing back and pray 
truly. A sin cherished makes words of prayer 
of no avail. A plan, a wish, a desire, wilfully 
urged, not submitted to God's perfect will, 
pressed rebelliously, shuts the ear of God to 
our praying. To pray means always the sacri- 
fice of the will. 

Is it, then, never hard to pray ? Does it cost 
nothing? Are there no struggles with self, no 
giving up of desires dear as life, no dropping of 
cherished things out of the hand, no crushing 
of tender human affections, in the quiet " Thy 
will be done n of our prayers ? 



I70 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

It was something you wanted, but you were 
not sure God wanted you to have it. You 
prayed earnestly for it, but you said, "Thy 
will, not mine, be done." The gift did not 
come, but your desire became less and less in- 
tense as you prayed and waited. At last, when 
it became evident that it was not God's will to 
grant your wish, there was no bitterness, no 
lingering struggle, only peace and a song. But 
did the submission cost you nothing ? 

Or it was a sorrow against which you 
pleaded. A loved one was stricken. With 
all your heart you prayed that your friend 
might recover. Yet, as you prayed, you were 
led by a gentle constraint to lay the burden 
of your desire in submission at God's feet. 
Slowly, as the days and nights of watching 
went by, and the illness grew worse instead of 
better, and when it became more and more 
certain that your dear one would be taken from 
you, there came into your heart a new, strange 
sense of God's love, and you were calm and 
quiet. Then, when the sorrow came, there was 
no rebellion, no bitterness, but only sweet 



THE COST OF PRAYING. 171 

trust. All this wondrous change your pray- 
ing had wrought in you. It had not changed 
God's wa), bringing it down to yours, but it 
had lifted you up into accord with God's will. 
Did it cost you nothing ? 

This is the inner history of every praying 
life. We ask for things we desire, things 
which we think would make us happier. Yet 
these things which we think would be bread to 
our hearts would really prove a stone if we had 
them. Our Father will never give his child a 
stone for bread, and hence the story of much 
of our praying is a story of unanswered prayers 
— unanswered in a sense. The things we 
want must be given up. Self must die. De- 
sire must yield. Faith must grow. Our wills 
must blend with God's. Our restlessness must 
nestle in his rest. Our struggle must become 
quiet in his peace. We must be lifted up 
nearer to God. Such struggle costs — costs 
anguish and tears, but it brings us rich good. 
No doubt many of our best blessings come 
through God's withholdings. Ofttimes it is 
more blessed to learn to do without things 



172 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

than it would be to get them. The prayer is 
not really unanswered in such cases. The 
things we asked for would not have been a 
blessing ; but the very longing, though it was 
not satisfied, did us good, made us stronger, 
lifted us up into better life, while the lesson of 
submission learned through struggle and pain 
was rich in its discipline. It is in such ex- 
periences that we grow upward toward God. 
Writes Sarah K. Bolton : — 

" Life is full of broken measures, 

Objects unattained : 
Sorrows intertwined with pleasures, 
Losses of our costliest treasures, 

Ere the heights be gained. 

Every soul has aspiration 

Still unsatisfied : 
Memories that wake vibration 
Of the heart in quick pulsation, 

At the gifts denied. 

We are better for the longing, 

Stronger for the pain : 
Souls at ease are nature wronging ; — 
Through the harrowed soul come thronging 

Seeds, in sun and rain ! 



THE COST OF PRAYING. 1 73 

Broken measures, fine completeness 

In the perfect whole : 
Life is but a day in fleetness ; 
Richer in all strength and sweetness 

Grows the striving soul." 

But such lessons are not easily learned. 
Such discipline is not easily gotten. It always 
costs to pray the soul into calmness and peace. 
The struggle grows less and less as the pray- 
ing goes on ; the pleadings are less intense ; at 
last they sob themselves into silence, and the 
lips speak with love and trust the word of sub- 
mission. But it has been at sore cost that this 
result has been gained. It was the dying of 
self that was going on. Such praying costs. 

There is another phase of the cost of pray- 
ing. We ask for more holiness. We know 
that this is God's will for us, and yet it may 
require a long time of struggle to bring our 
lives into true accord with our own desire. 
We pray to be made more humble, but it is 
probable that our longing can be answered 
only through many buffetings and defeats. 
We ask for patience, but the very word tells 



174 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

of suffering to be endured, and the quality of 
patience is one that can be gotten only through 
trial. We ask for more of Christ in our heart, 
and God is very willing to grant us this re- 
quest. But perhaps our heart is so preoccu- 
pied that room for more of Christ can be made 
only by the casting out of many other things. 
Here is where the cost is experienced. The 
old nature in us will not yield to the new with- 
out a protest, nor until vanquished and put 
under foot. 

It is never easy to grow better. You pray 
for a gentle temper. Does it come quietly and 
softly in answer to your prayer, as the dove 
came down out of the heavens to abide on 
Christ at his baptism ? This certainly is not 
the usual history of the evolution of a sweet 
temper. It is a story rather of sore and long 
discipline, in which a turbulent and uncon- 
trolled spirit is, by a slow process, tamed and 
trained into self-control, ofttimes only through 
long and sore struggle and many failures. 
When a man with an ungoverned temper be- 
gins to pray sincerely and earnestly that he 



THE COST OF PRAYING. I?$ 

may learn to rule his own spirit and to grow 
into lovingness of disposition, he does not 
know what it will cost him to have his prayer 
answered. It is the same with all sincere re- 
quests for Christlikeness. We have the im- 
pression that a few petitions breathed up to 
God, asking him to make us pure, loving, and 
gentle, will bring the answer in some mysteri- 
ous way, working the change in us without any 
effort or struggle of our own. But it is not 
thus that such prayers are answered. 

John Newton, in one of his hymns, tells the 
story of such a prayer. He asked the Lord 
that he might grow in faith, and love, and 
every grace. He hoped that in some favored 
hour the request would be at once answered, 
and his sins subdued by love's restraining 
power. Instead of this, however, he was made 
to feel the hidden evils of his heart, and his soul 
was assaulted by the angry powers of darkness. 

"'Lord, why is this ?' I trembling cried; 
' Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death ? ' 
1 Tis in this way,' the Lord replied, 
' 1 answer prayer for grace and faith ; 



176 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

These inward trials I employ 
From self and pride to set thee free ; 

And break thy schemes of earthly joy, 
That thou mayest seek thine all in me. 11 ' 

They know not what they ask who begin to 
pray sincerely and deeply, " Nearer, my God, 
to thee." It may indeed require a cross to lift 
us higher and nearer. But no price is too great 
to pay to become conquerors over self, and to 
grow into holiness and beauty of life. 

Another example of the cost of praying is 
found in prayers for others. Sometimes it is 
easy enough to pray for our friends, and seems 
to involve nothing on our part. But we do not 
pray long for others with true earnestness and 
with the importunity of love, before we find 
that we have something to do to make our 
praying avail. A parent's pleading for a child 
draws the parent's whole soul with it. We 
pray for the heathen; and, unless we are heart- 
lessly insincere, we must take a corresponding 
interest in movements to save the heathen. We 
pray for the sick, the poor, the needy; and if 
we mean it at all, our love will not stop at 



THE COST OF PRAYING. 1 77 

praying. A city missionary implored God to 
send his angel to care for two orphan children 
whom he had found in a cold, fireless hovel, 
starving and naked beside the dead body of 
their mother. Instantly a voice spoke to him 
in his conscience, " Thou art mine angel ; for 
this very purpose did I send thee here." His 
praying for these children proved a costly act. 
You would better not begin pleading for one of 
God's little ones in need or trouble, telling God 
of your interest in the suffering one, if you want 
your praying to cost you nothing. Almost 
surely God will ask you to care for the suffering 
one for him. 

We are to pray for our enemies, for those 
who despitefully use us. That is not easy. It 
costs no struggle when we go home in the even- 
ing and kneel down before God in our closet, 
to recall all who have been gentle and kind to 
us, and to pray for them. Anybody can do that. 
But we are to recall also and especially those 
who have been unkind to us, who have spoken 
evil of us, or have injured us in some way, and 
are to pray for these. And praying for them 



178 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

involves forgiveness in every case. We cannot 
keep the resentment, the angry feeling, the 
grudge, after truly praying for those who have 
done us hurt. At the altar of intercessory 
prayer all anger, passion, and bitterness die. 
Praying for others sweeps out of our heart 
everything but love. Thus it proves very costly, 
but the blessing it brings is very rich. 

These are illustrations of the cost of praying. 
Every true spiritual longing is a reaching up 
out of self into a better, truer, nobler life. 
Praying is always a climbing upward toward 
God. We can thus climb only at the cost of 
struggle and self-denial, the crucifixion of the 
old nature. David said he would not offer to 
God that which had cost him nothing. In 
prayer the same test can be applied. Pleadings 
that cost nothing have no answer. Prayers that 
cost the most bring down the richest blessings. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

MAKING FRIENDSHIP HARD. 

" Mine be the love that in itself can find 
Seed of white thoughts, the lilies of the mind, 
Seed of that glad surrender of the will 
Which finds in service selfs true purpose still." 

The secret of being a friend lies in the power 
to give and do and serve without thought of 
return. It is not easy. Wanting to have a 
friend is altogether different from wanting to 
be a friend. The former is a mere natural hu- 
man craving ; the latter is the life of Christ in 
the soul. Christ craved friendship, but he 
longed always to be a friend. Every life that 
came before him he desired to help and bless 
in some way. He never tired of the faults and 
imperfections of his disciples ; he was not seek- 
ing mere pleasure for himself in them, but was 
striving to do them good. Hence he never 
grew tired of them. His interest in them was 
like that of a kindly physician in his patient. 

179 



l8o THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Wherever the spirit of Christ is in a human 
heart this same desire is found. True friend- 
ship is unwearied in doing good, in serving and 
helping others. Yet it is only right that the 
other side of being a friend should have atten- 
tion. We must not put the love and unselfish- 
ness of our friends to too sore a testing. 

There are some people who make it very hard 
for others to be their friends. They put friend- 
ship to unreasonable tests. They make de- 
mands upon it to which only the largest patience 
and the most generous charity will submit. 

There are some persons who complain that 
they have no friends, and ofttimes the complaint 
may be almost true. There are none with whom 
they have close personal friendship. They have 
no friend who is ready to share in all their life, 
rejoicing with them in their joys, and bearing 
beside them and with them their load of care, 
sorrow, or anxiety. They seem without real 
companionship, although all about them throng 
other lives with the very things of love for 
which their hearts are crying out. 

These unfriended ones think the fault is with 



MAKING FRIENDSHIP HARD. l8l 

the other people, whom they regard as cold, 
uncongenial, selfish. But really the fault is 
with themselves. They make it all but impos- 
sible for anyone to be their close personal 
friend. Nothing less holy and less divine than 
mother-love can endure the exactions and de- 
mands they put upon those who would be glad, 
if they could, to stand in the relation of friends 
to them. 

A close friendship can be formed and can 
continue to exist only where there is mutual 
unselfishness. It cannot all be on one side. 
We cannot expect our friend to give all while 
we give nothing. We cannot ask that he be 
generous, patient, confiding, self-denying, and 
thoughtful toward us, while we in our bearing 
toward him lack all these qualities. Christ 
bears with us in all our sad faultiness, is patient 
toward all our weakness, infirmity, and sin ; and 
is our faithful, unfailing friend, though we give 
him but little love, and that little mingled with 
doubts, complainings, murmurings, and ingrati- 
tude. Many of us make it hard for Christ 
to be our friend ; yet he loves unto the end, 



1 82 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

unto the uttermost. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 
writes : — 

"Thine the bearing and forbearing 
Through the patient years ; 
Thine the loving, and the moving 
Plea of sacred tears. 

Thine the caring and the wearing 

Of my pain for me ; 
Thine the sharing and the bearing 

Of my sin on thee. 

Mine the leaving and the grieving 

Of thy mournful eyes ; 
Mine the fretting and forgetting 

Of our blood-bound ties. 

Mine the plaining and complaining, 

And complaining still; 
Mine the fearing and the wearying 

Of thy tender will. 

Mine the wrecking, thine the building, 

Of our happiness — 
My only Saviour, help me make 

The dreadful difference less." 

The mothers come next to Christ in their 
friendship, — patient, unwearying, without re- 
turn. Many children make it very hard even 



MAKING FRIENDSHIP HARD. 1 83 

for their mother to be their friend, putting her 
love to very sore tests. Yet she too loves on, 
in the face of all ingratitude, unkindness, un- 
worthiness. 

But there are few others who will be such 
friends to us as Christ and our mothers, who 
will be so patient with us, who will love us and 
love on when we do not take our just share of 
the friendship, or when we give only hurt or 
ingratitude in return for love and tenderness. 
There are few outside our own family who will 
take the trouble to maintain close relations 
with us, when we make it as hard as we can for 
them to do so. There may be one or two per- 
sons among those who know us, who have love 
disinterested enough to cling to us in spite of 
all our wounding of their affection, and all the 
needless burden we put upon their faithfulness. 
But such friends are rare, and the man is fortu- 
nate who has even one who will be such a friend 
to him while he puts the friendship to such 
unreasonable proof. 

There are many ways in which friendship is 
made hard. One way is by doubting and by 



184 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

questioning. There are those who demand re- 
peated assertion and assurance in word, every 
time they meet their friend, that he is still their 
friend. If he fails to put his abiding, loyal 
interest into some fervent, oft-repeated formula 
of constancy, they begin to wonder if he has 
not changed in his feeling toward them, and 
perhaps tell him of their anxiety. A little 
thought will show any one how hard friendship 
is made by such a course as this. This spirit 
indicates want of full trust, and nothing more 
effectually stunts and deadens the heart's gentle 
affections than being doubted. It indicates 
also a morbid sentimentality, which is very 
unwholesome. 

Such demand for reiterated avowal may be 
pardoned in very young lovers who have not 
yet attained to manly or womanly strength, but 
in the relations of common friendship it should 
never be made. The moment a true-hearted 
man, eager to be helpful to another, finds the 
sentimental spirit creeping in, he is embar- 
rassed in his effort to do a friend's part ; and, 
if he is not a man of large patience and un- 



MAKING FRIENDSHIP HARD. I 85 

wearying kindness, he will find his helpfulness 
greatly hindered. Many an earnest desire to 
be a friend is rendered altogether unavailing by 
such a spirit. In any case, friendship is made 
hard for a man, however loyal and unselfish he 
may be. 

Another way in which friendship is made 
hard is by an exacting spirit. There are those 
who seem to think of a friend only as one who 
should help them. They value him in propor- 
tion to the measure of his usefulness to them. 
Hence they expect him to show them favors at 
every point, and to do many things for them. 
They do not seem to have any conception of 
the lofty truth that the heart of friendship is 
not the desire to receive, but the desire to give. 
We cannot claim to be another's friend if all 
we want is to be served by him. We are only 
declaring our unmitigated selfishness when we 
act on this principle. 

Yet there are those who would exact all and 
give nothing. Their friend may show them 
kindnesses in unbroken continuity for years, 
doing perhaps ofttimes important things for 



1 86 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

them; but the moment he declines or omits to 
grant some new favor which they have sought, 
all past acts are instantly forgotten. 

There are few generous people who do not 
repeatedly have just this experience. Of course 
no return in favors is desired by a true friend. 
There are many cases indeed in which, in one 
sense, the helpfulness of the friendship must 
necessarily be all on one side. It may be so 
when one is an invalid, unable to do anything, 
compelled to be a burden continually upon a 
friend. But in such a case there is a return 
possible which is a thousand times better than 
if it could be made in kind — a return of grati- 
tude, of affection, of trust. Such a requital 
makes friendship easy, though the calls upon it 
for service may be constant and very heavy. 
But the spirit here referred to makes it very 
hard for a friend to go on carrying the load 
year after year. Demands upon love do not 
help in the nourishing of love. He who would 
compel our service, especially he who would 
enforce demands for manifestations of affection, 
puts his friend to a very sore test. One may 



MAKING FRIENDSHIP HARD. I 87 

be ready to give and serve and suffer for an- 
other, even to the uttermost ; but one does not 
like to do this under compulsion, in order to 
meet exacting demands. 

Another example is that in which one claims 
a friend exclusively for one's own. There are 
such people. They want their friend to show 
interest in no other, to do kindness to no other. 
This also might be excused in a certain kind of 
very sentimental young lovers, but it is not 
confined to such. It exists in many cases 
toward others of the same sex, nor is it con- 
fined to the very young. Persons have been 
known to demand that the one who is their 
friend shall be theirs so exclusively as scarcely 
to treat others respectfully. Any pleasant 
courtesy to another has been taken as a per- 
sonal slight and hurt to the chosen "friend." 

Unless both persons are alike weak and sen- 
timental, such a spirit cannot but make friend- 
ship hard. No man or woman who has the 
true conception of life is willing to be bound 
in such chains. We cannot fulfil our mission 
in God's great world of human beings by per- 



1 88 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

mitting ourselves to be tied up in this senti- 
mental way to any one person. No worthy 
friendship ever makes such demands. Love 
knows no such limitations ; only jealousy can 
inspire such narrowness, and jealousy is always 
ignoble and dishonoring. A noble wife and 
husband, bound in one, in the most sacred of 
ties, make no such weak and selfish demand 
upon each other. Each desires the other, while 
loyal and true in the closer relation, to be the 
largest possible blessing to all the world, know- 
ing that their mutual love is not made less, but 
richer, by the exercise of unselfishness toward 
all who need help. 

The same spirit should be manifested in all 
friendships, and will be manifested just so far as 
they are noble and exalted in character, and are 
set free from narrowness and jealousy. A man 
need be no less my friend, no less true, no less 
helpful to me, because he is the friend of hun- 
dreds more who turn to him with their cravings 
and needs, and find strength and inspiration in 
him. The heart grows rich in loving, and my 
friend becomes more to me through being the 



MAKING FRIENDSHIP HARD. 1 89 

friend of others. But if I demand that he 
shall be my friend only, I make it very hard 
for him to be my friend at all. 

Only a few suggestions have been given of 
the way in which many people make it hard 
for others to be their friends. Not only do 
they make it hard for their friends to continue 
their faithfulness and helpfulness to them, but 
they rob themselves of the full, rich blessings 
which they might receive, and lessen the value 
to them of the friendship which they would make 
of yet greater value. We can get the most and 
the best from our friends by being large-hearted 
and trustful ourselves, by putting no trammels 
on them, by making no demands or exactions, 
by seeking to be worthy of whatever they may 
wish to do for us, by accepting what their love 
prompts in our behalf, proving our gratitude by 
a friendship as sincere, as hearty, as disinter- 
ested, and as helpful as it is in our power to 
give. Thus shall we make it easy for others to 
be our friends, and shall never have occasion 
to say that nobody cares for us. 

In what has been said, it is not intended to 



190 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

teach that in our friendships we should be im- 
patient and easily wearied with the faults and 
imperfections of those whom we seek to help. 
We should not be easily offended or driven 
away. On the other hand, we should be as 
nearly perfect as possible in our patience and 
endurance. We should be Christlike, and 
Christ loves unto the uttermost. His love is 
not worn out by our faultiness, our dulness, 
nor even by our sinning. We cannot be full, 
rich blessings in the world unless we have in 
us, in large measure, the love that seeketh not 
its own, is not provoked, beareth all things, 
endureth all things, and never faileth. The 
capacity for being a blessing to others is a 
capacity for loving ; and the capacity for loving 
is a capacity for self-denial, for long-suffering, 
for the giving of its own life without thought 
of return. 

To many it does not seem worth while to 
give labor and thought and time and strength 
and patience and comfort at such cost, to help 
along through life the weak, the broken, the 
sinning, ofttimes the unreasonable, the ungrate- 



MAKING FRIENDSHIP HARD. I91 

ful. But it was thus that Christ lived, and 
there is no other standard of living that will 
reach up to the divine ideal. Besides, it is 
such losing of self that is the only real saving 
of a life. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

"GIVE YE THEM TO EAT." 

" My life is not my own, but Christ's, who gave it, 

And he bestows it upon all the race; 
I lose it for his sake, and thus I save it ; 
I hold it close, but only to expend it ; 

Accept it, Lord, for others, through thy grace!" 

We begin to live only when we begin to 
love, and we begin to love only when self dies 
and we live to bless others. We forget too 
often that we are the body of Christ in this 
world. The things he would do for men we 
must do. His pity for the lost must throb in 
our human hearts. His comfort for earth's 
sorrow must be spoken by human lips. He is 
the bread of life which alone can feed men's 
hunger, but it must pass through our hands. 
We must be the revealers of Christ to others. 
The love must flow to them through us. We 
are the branches, and from our little lives must 
drop the fruits which shall meet men's cravings. 

192 



"GIVE YE THEM TO EAT" 1 93 

The importance of this human part is well 
illustrated in our Lord's miracle of the feeding 
of the five thousand. When the need of the 
people was spoken of, the disciples proposed 
to send them away to buy bread for themselves. 
Jesus replied, " They have no need to go away ; 
give ye them to eat." No wonder the disciples 
were startled by such a command, when they 
realized the smallness of their own resources. 
Yet a little later they did give the multitudes 
to eat from their own small stores, and had 
abundance left for themselves. 

The miracle is for our instruction. All about 
us are those who have many and sore needs. 
We pity them. We turn to Christ with our 
pity, and pray him to send some one to feed and 
bless those who are in such need. But as we 
listen we hear him say, " Give ye them to eat ! " 
Then we say, " Why, Master, we have nothing 
to give to these hungry multitudes. We can- 
not comfort these sorrows. We cannot guide 
these tottering, stumbling feet. We cannot 
give strength to these fainting hearts. We 
cannot meet these intense cravings for sym- 



194 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

pathy, for love, for life. We cannot feed these 
hungers. We have only our five barley loaves, 
and here are thousands/' But our Lord's quiet 
answer still is, " Give ye them to eat." 

Christ always used the human so far as the 
human would reach. He never wrought an 
unnecessary miracle. If the work could be 
done without the putting forth of supernatural 
energy, it was so wrought. And when miracles 
were performed, all that human ability could do 
in the process was left to human ability. There 
was never any waste of miracle. Then it is a 
common law in the kingdom of God that, when- 
ever possible, divine gifts are passed to men 
through other men. God sends many of his 
gifts to the world through human hands and 
hearts. The word of God was spoken in olden 
times through human lips. When God came to 
reveal his love and mercy in a life, the people 
looked up and saw a face like their own faces. 
The real worker in the world to-day is the Holy 
Spirit. His is the power that regenerates, sanc- 
tifies, and comforts. But no eye sees him. He 
works invisibly, silently. What we see all the 



"GIVE YE THEM TO EAT" 1 95 

time is a human face and a human hand. We 
hear the Spirit's voice in the accents of lips 
like our own. The gospel is to be told to every 
creature ; but those who have learned it them- 
selves, and have been saved by it, must be the 
bearers of the good news. The command still 
and always is, " Give ye them to eat." 

This puts upon us who know the love and 
grace of Christ a great responsibility. Those 
who are in need or in sorrow about us must be 
blessed through us. The responsibility for 
helping, comforting, lifting up, these weak, sad, 
or fallen ones, is with us. Yet we seem to have 
nothing with which to answer their cravings. 
We have only five barley loaves, and what are 
they among so many ? 

We may get further instruction concerning 
the manner of blessing the world with our 
meagre resources, from the way the disciples 
fed these thousands. First, they brought their 
barley loaves to Christ. If they had begun 
feeding the people with what they had, without 
bringing it to the Master, it could have fed 
only a few. We also must bring our paltry 



196 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

resources to Christ, and put them into his 
hands. This is always the first thing in doing 
good. Without Christ's blessing, even the lar- 
gest resources or abilities will avail nothing. 
Christ can do nothing with us until we have 
really given ourselves into his hands. But 
when we have done this, no one on earth can 
tell the measure of good that may be wrought 
even by the smallest abilities. 

Then follows Christ's blessing on the loaves. 
His blessing maketh rich. We ought to pray 
continually that Christ's touch may be upon us, 
and that what we have may first lie in his 
hands, before it is given out to become food to 
others. There seems to be a significance, too, 
in the fact that Christ broke the loaves as he 
blessed them, before he gave them into the 
hands of the disciples. Often he must break 
us and our gifts before he can make us bread 
for others. Very beautifully do Dr. S. W. 
Duffield's lines illustrate this : — 

" They tell me I must bruise 
The rose's leaf 
Ere I can keep and use 
Its fragrance brief. 



"GIVE YE THEM TO EAT" 1 97 

They tell me I must break 

The skylark's heart 
Ere her cage song will make 

The silence start. 

They tell me love must bleed, 

And friendship weep, 
Ere in my deepest need 

I touch that deep. 

Must it be always so 

With precious things ? 
Must they be bruised, and go 

With beaten wings ? 

Ah, yes ! By crushing days, 

By caging nights, by scar 
Of thorns and stony ways, 

These blessings are ! " 

Many of us cannot be used to become food 
for the world's hunger until we are broken 
in Christ's hands. " Bread corn is bruised." 
Christ's blessing ofttimes means sorrow, but 
even sorrow is not too great a price to pay for 
the privilege of touching other lives with bene- 
diction. The sweetest things in this world 
to-day have come to us through tears and pain. 



198 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

We need never be afraid to make sacrifices in 
doing good. It is the things that cost that 
yield blessing. The ashes of our joys ofttimes 
nourish joys for others. 

" Some sweet or tender thing may grow 
To stronger life because of thee ; 
Content to play an humble part, 
Give of the ashes of thy heart, 
And haply God, whose dear decrees 
Taketh from those- to give to these, 
Who draws the snowdrop from the snows, 
May from these ashes feed a rose." 

The last thing in this story of the feeding of 
the people was the passing of the broken loaves 
through the hands of the disciples to the peo- 
ple. Jesus did not distribute them himself. 
He gives our consecrated gifts back to us, that 
we may dispense them. He would teach us, 
for one thing, that we can be our own best 
almoners. Our money loses sadly in power to 
do good if we must pass it through a society 
instead of taking it ourselves to those who need 
it. If possible, we would better always give it 
with our own hands, and let our love go with 



" GIVE YE THEM TO EAT " 1 99 

it, in expressions that will be bread for the 
hunger of those whom we would serve. 

" The gift without the giver is bare. 1 ' 

It is a great responsibility which this truth 
puts upon Christian people. The bread can 
reach the hungry only through the hands of the 
disciples. " Give ye them to eat " is still the 
word. The perishing world can get the bless- 
ings of the gospel of Christ only through us. 
Here stands the Master with the consecrated 
bread in his hands, enough for all. Yonder is 
the multitude, with countless needs and hun- 
gers. But between Christ and the people is 
the human ministry. " He gave the loaves to 
the disciples, and the disciples to the multi- 
tude." Suppose the disciples had eaten of the 
bread themselves, and, when satisfied, had still 
remained sitting there, enjoying their blessing, 
but carrying it no farther ; what would have 
been the result ? The people would have gone 
hungry, although there had been ample provis- 
ion made for them by the Master. The guilt 
would have been on the heads of the disciples. 



200 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

But we are now Christ's disciples. All about 
us are hungry people. Christ has bread to give 
them — enough to satisfy all their hungers. But 
it must pass to them through our hands. What 
if the bread stop with us ? What if we take it 

— this sacred bread, Christ's own body broken 
for us — and eat it with relish, and sit down and 
think not of those just beyond us who are hun- 
gering for comfort, for help, for love, for life ? 
This bread is not given to us for ourselves alone, 

— Christ gives no blessing in that way ; it is 
given for ourselves, and then to be passed on 
by us to others. Says Amiel, " It is better 
to be lost than to be saved all alone." And 
Susan Coolidge writes, using AmieFs words as 
a motto : — 

" To lie by the river of life and see it run to waste, 
To eat of the tree of heaven while the nations go 
unfed, 
To taste the full salvation — the only one to taste — 
To live while the rest are lost — oh, better by far 
be dead! 

For to share is the bliss of heaven, as it is the joy of 
earth ; 
And the unshared bread lacks savor, and the wine 
unshared lacks zest ; 



"GIVE YE THEM TO EAT." 20I 

And the joy of the soul redeemed would be little, 
little worth, 
If, content with its own security, it could forget 
the rest." 

So it is that we stand between Christ and a 
needy, hungry world. So it is that the bid- 
ding ever comes to us, " Give ye them to eat." 
Let us be faithful. It would be a bitter thing, 
indeed, if any should perish because we did 
not carry to them the bread which the Master 
gives us for them. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ON JUDGING OTHERS. 

" Don't look for the flaws as you go through life ; 

And even when you find them, 
It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind, 

And look for the virtue behind them. 
For the cloudiest night has a hint of the light 

Somewhere in its shadows hiding ; 
It is better, by far, to look for a star 

Than the spots on the sun abiding." 

It is better to have eyes for beauty than for 
blemish. It is better to be able to see the roses 
than the thorns. It is better to have learned to 
look for things to commend in others than for 
things to condemn. Of course other people 
have faults, and we are not blind. But then we 
have faults of our own, and this should make us 
charitable. 

We have a divine teaching on the subject. 

Our Lord said, " Judge not, that ye be not 

judged." We need to understand just what 

202 



ON JUDGING OTHERS, 203 

the words mean. We cannot help judging 
others. We ought to be able to read charac- 
ter, and to know whether men are good or bad. 
As we watch men's acts we cannot help form- 
ing opinions about them. The holier we grow 
and the more like Christ, the keener will be 
our moral judgments. We are not bidden to 
shut our eyes and to be blind to people's faults 
and sins. 

What, then, do our Lord's words mean ? It is 
uncharitable judgment against which he warns 
us. We are not to look for the evil things in 
others. We are not to see others through the 
warped glasses of prejudice and unkindly feel- 
ing. We are not to arrogate to ourselves the 
function of judging, as if men were answerable 
to us. We are to avoid a critical or censo- 
rious spirit. Nothing is said against speaking 
of the good in those we see and know ; it is 
uncharitable judging and speaking that are 
condemned. 

One reason why this is wrong is that it is 
putting one's self in God's place. He is the 
one Judge with whom every human soul has to 



204 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

do. Judgment is not ours, but God's. " One 
only is the lawgiver and the judge, even he who 
is able to save and to destroy ; but who art thou 
that judgest thy neighbor ? " In condemning 
and censuring others, we are thrusting our- 
selves into God's seat, taking his sceptre into 
our hands, and presuming to exercise one of his 
prerogatives. 

Another reason for this command is that 
we cannot judge others justly and fairly. We 
have not sufficient knowledge of them. St. 
Paul says: " Judge nothing before the time, 
until the Lord come, who both will bring to 
light the hidden things of darkness, and make 
manifest the counsels of the hearts." Men's 
judgments cannot be aught but partial and 
superficial. 

We do not know what may be the causes of 
the faults we would condemn in others. If we 
did we would be more charitable toward them. 
Some people's imperfections are an inheritance 
which they have received from their parents. 
They were born with the weaknesses that now 
mar their manhood. Or their faults have come 



ON JUDGING OTHERS. 205 

through errors in their training and education. 
The nurse fell with the baby, and all down 
along the years the man goes about with a 
lameness or a deformity which mars his beauty 
of form. But he is not responsible for the 
marring, and criticism of the wounding in him 
would be cruel and unjust. There are hurts in 
character, woundings of the soul, which it is 
quite as unjust to condemn with anything but 
pity, for they are the inheritance of other men's 
wrong-doing. 

There often are causes for the warpings and 
distortings of lives, which, if we understood 
them, would make us lenient to those about us, 
and very patient with their peculiarities. We 
do not know what troubles people have, what 
secret sorrows, that so press upon their hearts 
as to affect their disposition, temper, or con- 
duct. " If we could read the secret history of 
our enemies, " says Longfellow, " we should find 
in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough 
to disarm all hostility." For example, we won- 
der at a man's want of cheerfulness. He seems 
unsocial, sour, cynical, cold. But all the while 



206 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

he is carrying a burden which almost crushes 
the life out of him. If we knew all that God 
knows of his life we would not speak a word of 
blame. Our censure would turn to pity and 
kindness, and we would silently try to help him 
bear his burden. 

Our hearts are softened toward men when 
they are dead. We hush our fault-finding when 
we stand by a man's coffin. Commendation 
then takes the place of criticism, We see the 
life then in new light, which seems to empha- 
size whatever was beautiful in it, and to throw 
into shadow whatever was unbeautiful. We are 
reverent toward the dead. Nothing but good 
should be spoken of them, we say. Death in- 
vests the life with sacredness in our eyes. It 
has gone to God. Yes, but is the life any 
the less sacred that moves before us or by our 
side, with all its sorrows and struggles and 
fears and hopes ? We should be reverent to- 
ward the dead, speaking of them in hushed 
accents, but we should be no less reverent 
toward the living. Mary Mapes Dodge puts 
this thought in this striking way : — 



ON JUDGING OTHERS. 207 

" ' Speak tenderly! For he is dead,' we say; 

' With gracious hand smooth all his roughened past, 
And fullest measure of reward forecast, 

Forgetting naught that glorified his brief day.' 

Yet when the brother, who, along our way, 

Prone with his burdens, heartworn in the strife, 
Totters before us — how we search his life! 

Censure and sternly punish while we may. 

Oh, weary are the paths of earth, and hard! 

And living hearts alone are ours to guard. 

At least, begrudge not to the sore distraught 

The reverent silence of our pitying thought. 

Life, too, is sacred ; and he best forgives 

Who says : 'He errs, but — tenderly! He lives.'" 

A great deal of our judging of others is mis- 
judging or unjust judging, because of the frag- 
mentariness of our knowledge of their personal 
lives and experiences. It would ofttimes grieve 
us, and make us sorely ashamed of ourselves, 
if, when we have judged another severely, we 
should be shown a glimpse of the other's inner 
life, revealing hidden sorrows and struggles 
which are the cause of the things in him we 
have blamed so much. We have only a most 
partial view of another's life, and cannot form 



208 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

absolutely unerring judgments on what we see 
and know. We see only one side of an act, 
when there may be another side that altogether 
changes its quality. Whittier tells us of his 
pressed gentian, one side of which was but a 
blurred mass of crushed leaves, while the other 
showed all the exquisite beauty of the flower. 
Life is full of similar two-sided views of people 
and of acts. We see a man out in the world, 
and he appears harsh and stern. We see him 
some day at home where his invalid child lies 
and suffers, and there he is another man, kindly, 
thoughtful, with almost motherly gentleness. 
It would have been most unjust to this man if 
we had made up our judgment of him from the 
outside view alone, without seeing him in his 
child's sick-room. 

A young man was severely criticised by his 
companions for his closeness and meanness. 
He received a good salary, but lived in a 
pinched way, without even the plain comforts 
that his friends thought he could easily have 
afforded, and without any of that generous ex- 
penditure in social ways in which other young 



ON JUDGING OTHERS. 209 

men of his class indulged. Many strictures 
were made on his meanness — as it seemed to 
his companions. That was one side of his life ; 
but there was another. That young man had 
an only sister — they were orphans — who was 
a great sufferer, shut in her room, kept on her 
bed continually. This only brother provided for 
her. That was the reason he lived so closely, 
saving every cent he could save, and doing 
without many things which other young men 
thought indispensable, that she in her loneliness 
and pain might be cared for and might have 
comforts. That was the other side of the char- 
acter, the one side of which appeared so unat- 
tractive to his friends. We see how unjust was 
their judgment, based on knowledge of only the 
one phase of his conduct. Seen in connection 
with its motive, the quality so severely censured 
became a mark of noble, manly beauty. To 
judge from a fragment only is to judge igno- 
rantly and unjustly. 

A tender story is told of Professor Blackie, 
of Edinburgh, which illustrates the same lesson. 
He was lecturing to a new class, and a student 



2IO THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

rose to read a paragraph, holding the book 
in his left hand. " Sir," thundered the pro- 
fessor, " hold your book in your right hand." 
The student attempted to speak. " No words, 
sir ! your right hand, I say ! " The lad held up 
his right arm, ending piteously at the wrist : 
" Sir, I hae nae right hand," he said. 

Before the professor could open his lips there 
arose such a storm of hisses as one perhaps must 
go to Edinburgh to hear, and by it his voice was 
overborne. Then he left his place, and going 
down to the student he had unwittingly hurt, 
he put his arm around the lad's shoulders and 
drew him close to his breast. " My boy," said 
Blackie, — he now spoke very softly, yet not 
so softly but that every word was audible in 
the hush that had fallen on the classroom, 
— " You'll forgive me that I was overrough ? 
I did not know — I did not know." 

Our own imperfections also unfit us forjudg- 
ing fairly. With beams in our own eyes we 
cannot see clearly to pick motes out of our 
brother's eye. One of the qualities which 
make us incapable of impartial judgment of 



ON JUDGING OTHERS. 211 

others is envy. There are few of us who can 
see our neighbor's life, work, and disposition 
without some warping and distortion of the 
picture. Envy has a strange effect on our 
moral vision. It shows the beautiful things 
in others with the beauty dimmed. It shows 
the blemishes and faults in them exaggerated. 
In other forms, too, the miserable selfishness of 
our hearts obtrudes itself and makes our judg- 
ments of others ofttimes really unkind and un- 
charitable. The lack of experience in struggle 
makes many people incapable of sympathy with 
sorely tempted ones. Those who have never 
known a care nor felt the pinching of want can- 
not understand the experiences of the poor. 
Thus, in very many ways, we are unfitted in 
ourselves to be judges of others. 

Another reason why we should not judge 
others is that our business with them, our 
true duty toward them, is to help them to rise 
out of their faults. We are set together in life 
to make each other better. And the way to do 
this is not by prating continually about the 
faults we see in others. Nagging and scolding 



212 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

never yet made anybody saintly. Constant 
pointing out of blemishes never cured any one 
of his blemishes. Perhaps there is a duty of 
telling others of their faults ; but, if so, it exists 
only in certain rare relations, and must be exer- 
cised only in a spirit of rare lovingness. We 
are often told that one of the finest qualities in a 
true friend is that he can and will faithfully tell 
us our faults. Perhaps that is true, but not 
many of us have grace enough to welcome and 
accept profitably such an office in a friend. A 
mother may tell her own children their faults, if 
she will do it wisely and affectionately, never 
in anger or impatience. A teacher may tell his 
pupils their mistakes and show them their 
faults, if it be done in true, loving desire for 
their improvement. But in ordinary friendship 
one cannot accept the office of censor, even 
when besought to do so, save with the strong- 
est probability that the result will be the loss of 
the friendship, as the price paid for the possible 
curing of the friend's fault. 

Nagging is not a means of grace. There is 
a more excellent way, the way of love. It is 



ON JUDGING OTHERS. 213 

better, when we wish to correct faults in others, 
to be careful to let them see in us, in strong 
relief, the virtue, the excellence, opposite to 
the defect we see in them. It is the habit of a 
certain good man, if one of his family or friends 
mispronounces a word in his hearing, never 
pedantically to correct the error, but at some 
early opportunity to find occasion to use the 
same word, giving it the correct pronunciation. 
Something like this is wise in helping others 
out of their faults of character or conduct. An 
example is better than a criticism. 

That was our Lord's way with his disciples. 
He never scolded them. He bore patiently 
with their dulness and slowness as scholars. 
He never wearied of repeating the same lesson 
over and over to them. But he was never cen- 
sorious. Even he did not judge them. He did 
not keep telling them of all the blemishes he 
saw in them. That was not his way of seeking 
their growth into better, sweeter life. His 
heart was full of love. He saw back of all 
their infirmities and failures the sincerity and 
the desire to do right, and with infinite patience 



214 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

and gentleness he helped them ever toward 
the larger, better, sweeter life. 

We need to relate ourselves to others as did 
Christ to his disciples, if we would help others 
to grow into spiritual beauty. Censoriousness 
accomplishes nothing in making people better. 
You can never make any one sweet by scolding 
him. Only gentleness will produce gentleness. 
Only love will cure infirmities of disposition. 
As a rule, fault-finding is exercised in any but 
a loving spirit. People are not truly grieved 
by the sins in others which they complacently 
expose and condemn. Too often they seem to 
delight in having discovered something not 
beautiful in a neighbor, and they swoop down 
upon the wrong thing like an unclean bird on 
carrion. If ever criticism is indulged in, it 
should be with deep grief for the friend, that 
the fault exists in him, and with sincere desire 
that for his sake it be removed ; and then the 
criticism should be made, not in the ear of the 
world, but " between him and thee alone." 

We should train ourselves, therefore, to see 
the good, not the evil, in others. We should 



ON JUDGING OTHERS. 21 5 

speak approving words of what is beautiful in 
them, not bitter, condemning words of what 
may be imperfect or unlovely. We should look 
at others through eyes of love, not through 
eyes of envy or of selfishness, and should seek 
to heal with true affection's gentleness the 
things that are not as they should be. 

" How do we know what hearts have vilest sin? 
How do we know? 
Many, like sepulchres, are foul within, 

Whose outward garb is spotless as the snow ; 
And many may be pure we think not so. 
How near to God the souls of such have been, 
What mercy secret penitence may win — 
How do we know? 

How can we tell who sinned more than we? 

How can we tell ? 
We think our brother has walked guiltily, 

Judging him in self-righteousness. Ah, well ! 
Perhaps, had we been driven through the hell 
Of his untold temptations, we might be 
Less upright in our daily walk than he — 
How can we tell? 

Dare we condemn the ills that others do? 

Dare we condemn? 
Their strength is small, their trials are not few ; 



2l6 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

The tide of wrong is difficult to stem. 

And if to us more clearly than to them 
Is given knowledge of the great and true, 
More do they need our help and pity too — 
Dare we condemn? 

God help us all, and lead us day by day — 

God help us all ! 
We cannot walk alone the perfect way. 
Evil allures us, tempts us, and we fall ; 
We are but human, and our power is small ; 
Not one of us may boast, and not a day 
Rolls o'er our heads but each hath need to say 
God bless us all ! " 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CHRIST'S WITHHELD LESSONS. 

" Is it true, Christ in heaven, 
That, whichever way we go, 
Walls of darkness must surround us, 
Things we would but cannot know ? " 

All learning is slow. This is true in pro- 
portion to the importance of the lessons. We 
learn some things quickly, but they are not 
the things which are of greatest value. Mere 
head-lessons are gotten more easily than heart- 
lessons. We may memorize the beatitudes in 
a few minutes, but it takes many years to learn 
to live them. And in moral lessons this is the 
only learning that counts. Any one can get a 
code of ethics by heart, without much effort ; 
but to get the faultless code wrought into con- 
duct, disposition, spirit, character, is the work 
of a lifetime. 

In life-teaching the lessons are given only as 

217 



2l8 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

fast as they are learned. Our Master will not 
teach us more rapidly than we can take his les- 
sons. It was in the midst of his most confiden- 
tial talk with his disciples that he said he had 
many things to say to them which they could 
not yet bear. All wise teaching must be from 
the simplest rudiments up to the more complex 
knowledge. The mind is not capable of com- 
prehending the higher elements till it has been 
developed and trained. Then truth itself is 
progressive, and the pupil is not prepared to 
receive the advanced lessons until he has 
mastered the rudiments. 

Spiritual truths can be received only as we 
come to the experiences for which they are 
adapted. There are many of the divine prom- 
ises which we can never claim, and whose 
blessedness we cannot realize, until we come to 
the points in life for which they were specially 
given. For example : " In the time of trouble 
he shall hide me in his pavilion. " This word 
can mean nothing to the child playing amid the 
flowers, or to the young man or woman walk- 
ing in sunny paths, without a care or a trial. 



CHRIST'S WITHHELD LESSONS. 219 

It can be understood only by one who is in 
trouble. Or, take Christ's word : " My grace 
is sufficient for thee." It was given first in 
place of an answer to a prayer for the removal 
of a sore trial. It meant divine strength to 
offset human weakness ; and it cannot be re- 
ceived until there is a sense of need. Christ 
stands beside a happy young Christian and 
says, "I have a precious word to give you, one 
that shines with the beauty of divine love ; but 
you cannot bear it yet." The disciple moves 
on along life's sunny path, and by and by 
comes into the shadows of sorrow or trouble. 
Again the Master stands beside him and says, 
"Now I can give you the word I withheld 
before. It is this : ' My grace is sufficient for 
thee.' Then the promise glows with light 
and love. 

There is a large part of the Bible which can 
be received by us only when we come into the 
places for which the words were given. There 
are promises for weakness which we can never 
get while we are strong. There are words for 
times of danger which we can never know in 



220 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

the days when we need no protection. There 
are consolations for sickness whose comfort we 
can never get while we are in robust health. 
There are promises for times of loneliness, 
when men walk in solitary ways, which never 
can come with real meaning to us while loving 
companions are by our side. There are words 
for old age which we never can appropriate for 
ourselves along the years of youth, when the 
arm is strong, the blood warm, and the heart 
brave. God cannot show us the stars while 
the sun shines in the heaven ; and he cannot 
make known to us the precious things of love 
which he has prepared for our nights while it is 
yet day about us. Christ says to us then, " I 
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye 
cannot bear them now." We could not under- 
stand them. But by and by when we come 
into places of need, of sorrow, of weakness, of 
human failure, of loneliness, of sickness, of old 
age, then he will tell us these other things, 
these long-withheld things, and they will be 
full of joy for our hearts. When night comes, 
he will show us the stars. 



CHRIST'S WITHHELD LESSONS. 221 

Older Christians will understand this. There 
are many things in the Bible which had little 
meaning for them in life's earlier days, but 
which one by one have shone out bright and 
beautiful along the years, as stars come out in 
the evening sky when the sun fades from the 
heavens. Even in childhood the words were 
said over and over ; but they were repeated 
thoughtlessly because there had been no ex- 
perience to prepare the heart to receive them. 
Then one day there crept a shadow over the 
life, and in the shadow the long familiar words 
began for the first time to have a meaning. 
Other experiences of care, trial, and loss fol- 
lowed, and the precious words became more 
and more real. Now, in old age, as the sacred 
texts are repeated, they are the very rod and 
staff to the trembling, trusting spirit. No 
better illustration of this truth can be given 
than we have in the familiar lines which tell 
how an old hymn was learned : — 

" Rock of Ages, cleft for me!" 
Thoughtlessly the maiden sung; 

Fell the words unconsciously 

From her girlish, gleeful tongue ; 



222 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Sang as little children sing; 

Sang as sing the birds in June ; 
Fell the words like light leaves down 

On the current of the tune — 
" Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in thee ! n 

" Let me hide myself in thee!" 

Felt her soul no need to hide — 
Sweet the song as sweet could be, 

And she had no thought beside ; 
All the words unheedingly 

Fell from lips untouched by care, 
Dreaming not that they might be 

On some other lips a prayer — 
" Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in thee ! " 

" Rock of Ages, cleft for me ! " 

'Twas a woman sung them now, 
Pleadingly and prayerfully. 

Every word her heart did know ; 
Rose the song as storm-tossed bird 

Beats with weary wing the air, 
Every note with sorrow stirred, 

Every syllable a prayer — 
" Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in thee ! " 



CHRIST'S WITHHELD LESSONS. 223 

" Rock of Ages, cleft for me ! " 

Lips grown aged sung the hymn, 
Trustingly and tenderly, 

Voice grown weak and eyes grown dim — 
"Let me hide myself in thee!" 

Trembling though the voice and low, 
Ran the sweet strain peacefully, 

Like a river in its flow ; 
Sang as only they can sing 

Who life's thorny path have pressed; 
Sang as only they can sing 

Who behold the promised rest — 
" Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in thee ! " 

" Rock of Ages, cleft for me! 1 ' 

Sung above a coffin-lid — 
Underneath, all restfully, 

All life's joys and sorrows hid ; 
Nevermore, O storm-tossed soul, 

Nevermore from wind and tide, 
Nevermore from billows 1 roll, 

Wilt thou need thyself to hide. 
Could the sightless, sunken eyes 

Closed beneath the soft gray hair ; 
Could the mute and stiffened lips 

Move again in pleading prayer, 

Still, aye still, the words would be, 

"Let me hide myself in thee! 1 ' 



224 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Thus, as life goes on, the meaning of Christ's 
words come out clearer and clearer, until the 
child's heedless repetition of them becomes the 
utterance of the faith and trust of the strong 
man's very soul. 

We cannot bear now the revealing of our 
own future. Christ knows it all. When a 
young Christian comes to the Master's feet and 
says, "I will follow thee whithersoever thou 
leadest," the Master knows what that promise 
means. But he does not reveal the knowledge 
to his happy disciple. People sometimes say 
they wish they could look on into the years and 
see all that will come to them. But would this 
be a blessing ? Would it make them happier ? 
Could they shape their course better if they 
knew all that shall befall them, — the struggles, 
the victories, the defeats, the joys and sorrows, 
the failures of bright hopes, — just how long 
they will live ? 

Surely it is better we should not know our 
future. So the word of the Master is continu- 
ally : " I have yet many things to say unto you, 
but ye cannot bear them now." Only as we 



CHRIST'S WITHHELD LESSOA r S. 225 

go on, step by step, does he disclose to us his 
will and plan for our life. Thus the joys of 
life do not dazzle us, for our hearts have been 
chastened so that we have learned how to re- 
ceive them. The sorrows do not overwhelm 
us, because each one brings its own special com- 
fort with it. But if we had known in advance 
the coming joys and prosperities, the exultation 
might have made us heedless of duty and of 
danger. We might have let go God's hand and 
have grown self-confident, thus missing the 
benediction that comes only to simple, trusting 
faith. If we had known of the struggles and 
trials before us, we might have become dis- 
heartened, thus failing of courage to endure. 
In either case we could not have borne the 
revealing, and it was in tenderness that the 
Master withheld it. 

We could not bear the many things Christ 
has to tell us about heaven, and therefore he 
does not tell them to us. The blessedness, if 
disclosed now, would dazzle and blind our eyes ; 
the light must be let in upon us, little by little, 
so as not to harm us. 



226 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Then if heaven were within our sight, as 
we toil and struggle and suffer here, the bliss 
would so excite us that we should be unfitted 
for duty. A traveller tells of returning to 
France after a long voyage to India. As soon 
as the sailors saw the shore of their own land 
they became incapable of attending to their 
duties on the ship. When they came into port 
and saw their friends on the quay, the excite- 
ment was so intense that another crew had to 
be found to take their place. Would it not be 
thus with us if heaven were visible from earth ? 
Its blessedness would win us away from our 
duties. The sight of its splendors would so 
charm and entrance us that we should weary of 
earth's painful life. If we could see our loved 
ones on heaven's shore, we would not be content 
to stay here to finish our work. Surely it is 
better that more has not been revealed. The 
veiled glory does not dazzle us ; and yet faith 
realizes it, and is sustained by the precious 
hope in its struggles in the night of earthly life, 
until at last the morning breaks. 
This is the great law of divine revealing. 



CHRIST'S WITHHELD LESSONS. 227 

We learn Christ's teaching as fast as we are 
able to bear it. So we may wait in patient 
faith when mysteries confront us, or when 
shadows lie on our pathway, confident that he 
who knows all has in gentle love withholden 
from us for the time the revealing we crave, 
because we could not yet endure the knowl- 
edge. Ever, therefore, our prayer may be : — 

" Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom, 

Lead thou me on ; 
The night is dark, and I am far from home, 

Lead thou me on. 
Keep thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene : one step's enough for me." 



CHAPTER XX. 

FOR THE DAYS OP DARKNESS. 

" Who followeth me shall walk in darkness never, 
The light of life shall brighten all his way ; 
Nor things of time, nor things to come, shall sever 
From him they love the children of the day." 

We are not to anticipate trial. God wants 
us to take the days as they come, building lit- 
tle fences of trust about each one, shutting out 
all that does not belong to it. We are not to 
stain to-day's blue sky with to-morrow's clouds. 
We are not to burden to-day's strength with 
to-morrow's loads. We are not to walk sadly 
in bright youth, when we have no sorrows, be- 
cause we know that later in life we must meet 
pain and grief. " Sufficient unto the day is 
the evil thereof." Yet we should live in the 
glad days so that when the sad days come 
they will not overwhelm us. For no matter 
how brightly the sun shines about us to-day, 

228 



FOR THE DAYS OF DARKNESS. 22Q 

it will some time grow dark. No holy living, 
no kind of preparation beforehand, can keep 
the affliction away. That is not the way God 
blesses his children. Yet there are ways of 
living in the sunny days so that when the 
night comes we shall not be left in utter 
darkness. 

One way is by storing our minds with the 
promises of God. We may get a lesson right 
here from our geology. Ages ago vegetation 
grew rank and luxuriant. Wisely our earth 
piled away all the vast debris of the falling and 
decaying forests, and covered it up. It seemed 
a foolish sort of carefulness and economy. Of 
what use would all this mass of dead trees and 
vegetation ever be ? But it is now earth's coal- 
beds, and it is lighting our homes in the dark 
nights. In the days of human gladness, when 
there is no trouble, no pain, there are many of 
God's words which seem to have no meaning 
for us. We do not need them. They are for 
times of sorrow, and we have no sorrow. They 
are lamps for the darkness, and we are not 
walking in darkness. They are for days of 



23O THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

pain and loss, and we have no pain, and are 
called to endure no loss. But if we are wise, 
if we would be ready for whatever the future 
may bring to us, we will not leave these un- 
heeded words unappropriated. We will take 
them into our heart and fix them there, as one 
would fix lamps in a house during the daytime, 
to be ready to shine when night comes. Then 
when the sorrow comes, as it surely will come, 
we shall not be overtaken by the darkness. 
These promises for which we had no use in 
the days of human joy, but which we took into 
our heart against the time of need, will now 
shine down upon us and fill our gloom with 
sweet light from heaven. That is one way of 
walking while we have the light, so that the 
darkness will not overtake us and overwhelm 
us. Hang the lamps all about your heart's 
chambers during the day. 

Another way is by keeping the vision clear 
all the time between our souls and heaven. It 
is not easy in the time of unbroken worldly 
prosperity to maintain unbroken communion 
with God. Prosperity fosters many things 



FOR THE DAYS OF DARKNESS. 23 1 

that serve to cut off our spiritual outlook. A 
man built a house on a spot which commanded 
a beautiful view of distant mountains and a 
great stretch of sky. Then he said, " I must 
have trees to shelter the house. Trees make 
any place more lovely." So he planted a num- 
ber of fine trees, and they grew up, and were 
much admired. But the trees were close to- 
gether, and, as they grew, their branches inter- 
laced ; and by and by they shut out the distant 
view, so that the mountains were no longer 
visible from the house, and scarcely a glimpse 
could be had of the sky. 

So it is often with men's lives. In their 
prosperity men gather about them many earthly 
interests and pleasures. These are very sweet ; 
but sometimes they shut out the view of 
heaven's glorious mountains, and of the blessed 
spiritual things which are the realities of Chris- 
tian faith. Many a life thus loses its famil- 
iarity with Christ, and the invisible things of 
God become less and less clear to the vision. 
Earthly interests absorb the thought and the 
affections. Then when sorrow comes and it 



232 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

grows dark, the heart cannot find its refuge, 
and goes uncomforted. The familiar joys have 
lost their power to bless, and the soul has no 
experience of the higher joys. 

Walk while ye have light, that the darkness 
overtake you not, swallow you not up. That 
is, in the days of earthly joy and prosperity, 
keep the view between your soul and heaven 
clear and open. Do not let the trees grow up 
about your life's home, so as to shut out your 
view of the mountains of God. Keep on in- 
timate and familiar terms all the time with 
Christ. Then when night comes the lights 
from your Father's house will shine down upon 
your darkness. Bereft of human companion- 
ship, the consciousness of the presence, the 
companionship, and the love of Jesus Christ, 
your unseen Friend, will become more and 
more real to you. Thus walking while you 
have the light, -the darkness when it comes 
will not overwhelm you. 

There are many such experiences of sorrow. 
They come, perhaps suddenly, to some Chris- 
tian who has known only gladness before ; but 



FOR THE DAYS OF DARKNESS, 233 

the life is not crushed. In the darkness the 
face of Christ appears in beauty never seen 
before, and the sad heart is comforted. 

Still another way in which we may be pre- 
pared in the light for the darkness is suggested 
by our Lord himself in one of his teachings. 
" While ye have the light, believe on the light, 
that ye may become sons of light." There is 
something very beautiful in this. If you walk 
in the light, the light will enter into you, and 
you will become a son of light. If a diamond 
lie for a while in the sunshine, and then be 
carried into a darkened room, a soft light will 
pour out from it. We know how it was with 
John, for example. He walked in the light of 
Christ for three years, and the light entered 
into him, into his very soul, until he became 
a shining light. So it was with all who were 
close friends of Christ. 

And we may walk in the light of Christ just 
as truly as did those who knew him in the flesh. 
Christ is not behind us, a mere historical figure 
of long centuries past. He is with us, as really 
present by our side as he was by Mary when 



234 ?** BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

she sat at his feet, or by John when he lay 
upon that blessed bosom. So we can walk in 
the light of Christ; and as we do so, we shall 
become light ourselves, filled with his light. 

But how can we get the light into our own 
life ? Only by opening our heart to the love 
of Christ. There were a great many people 
in those ancient days who saw Jesus, who met 
him ofttimes, who heard his wonderful words, 
who beheld his sweet life, who were witnesses 
of his patience, his gentleness, his gracious 
kindness, his unselfish ministry, but who never 
became children of light. Their lives remained 
dull and cold and dark as though they had 
never seen him. On the other hand, there 
were a few people who walked in the light of 
Christ, and became themselves transfigured, 
bright, shining children of light. 

What was the cause of this difference in the 
influence of Jesus upon different lives ? It is 
very plain to one who understands the law of 
spiritual impression. The people at large saw 
Christ, heard his words, beheld his sweet life, 
walked beneath his influence, but kept their 



FOR THE DAYS OF DARKNESS. 2$$ 

hearts shut against him. Christ's life flowed all 
about them, but found no entrance into them. 
The friends of Christ, however, believed in 
him, loved him, opened their souls to him, came 
into intimate communion with him, received 
his words, let his Spirit pour into their hearts. 
The divine life that flowed about them filled 
them. There is the same difference always 
among those who live under the influence of 
Christ. Not all take the blessing into their 
souls. Thousands know the truth of Chris- 
tianity who have not received the spirit of 
Christianity. But those who receive Christ 
himself become Christians, Christ's men, chil- 
dren of light, and shine themselves with the 
same light. 

That is what our Lord means for us when 
he says, " Ye are the light of the world." We 
are lighted at the flame of his life. Then as he 
was in the world so are we in the world. Our 
lives shine too. In our little measure we be- 
come Christs to others. We, in turn, are com- 
forters of the sorrow of the sorrowing, inspirers 
of hope in the despairing, and of strength in 



236 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

the weak. There is no other secret in the art 
of comfort. There is no use in your saying 
over verses of Scripture to those who are in 
darkness or trouble, if that is all you do. You 
must have light in yourself. The sorrowing 
must hear the heart-beat in your words. The 
life of Christ must flow through your lips and 
shine in your face. Walk in the light until you 
become a child of light, and then you can go 
out to shine for Christ in the world. 

If we are children of light, no darkness can 
overwhelm us. Night does not quench the 
lights that shine in our streets and in our 
homes ; they appear only the brighter as the 
darkness deepens. So, if we are children of 
light, the darkness of sorrow falling about us 
will not overwhelm us. It will not be dark in 
our soul, however deep the gloom outside. In 
the time of the three days' darkness in Egypt, 
God's people had light in their houses. Thus 
it is in the Christian home in the time of sorest 
and most sudden sorrow. This is the secret 
of comfort. Be filled with Christ. Open your 
heart to his love, to his Spirit, to his peace, to 



FOR THE DAYS OF DARKNESS. 2$j 

his joy, to his life. Abide in Christ until Christ 
abides in you, until you are filled with all the 
fulness of God. Then you need not fear any 
sorrow, for the comfort is in yourself. No dark- 
ness can make it dark in your soul, because the 
light of Christ shines there. 

Then in your own sorrow you will be a com- 
forter of others. Jesus, in his darkest hours, 
forgot himself and sought to comfort others. 
On the night of his betrayal, when the shadows 
were deepening about him, he took the disciples 
into the upper room, and comforted them in their 
deep and bitter grief with the most precious 
words of comfort earth's sorrowing ones have 
ever heard. Let those who are themselves 
crying out for consolation, go out into the sad 
world, and forget their own affliction as they 
seek to lift up other mourners. The words 
Christ has spoken to them in their hour of 
darkness let them speak forth again. Let the 
mother with the empty crib and the empty 
bosom go to the home where white crape 
hangs on the door, put her arm around the 
mother who sits there in her bitter grief, and 



238 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

tell her she understands the pain of her heart, 
and then whisper to her the comfort of God's 
love. In trying to console others, the mourner 
will find consolation for herself. 

There is no other secret of comfort like this. 
Walk in the light while ye have the light, and 
ye shall become the children of light. Then no 
darkness can overtake you, or quench the light 
that shines in you. Then you will be a light 
in the world to brighten other lives in their 
sorrow. Of a great preacher a poet wrote : — 

" Where he trod, 
Love of God 

Blossomed into sight. 
Form and hue 
Lovelier grew 

In the eternal light." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

HIDDEN WORDS IN THE BIBLE. 

" More and more stars ! and ever as I gaze 
Brighter and brighter seen ! 
Whence come they, Father ? Trace me out their ways 
Far in the deep serene." 

Keble. 

There is a great deal of beauty in the world 
which lies too deep for our eyes. There are 
millions of stars in depths of the heavens which 
no telescope reveals. Night unveils to us splen- 
dors which lie hidden in day's glare. 

One may write with invisible ink, and the 
words fade out after the pen, leaving no trace. 
Yet they remain in the paper, hidden there, un- 
seen and unsuspected by any eye that scans it. 
But if one day the paper be exposed to heat, the 
hidden words come out in all clearness, every 
line appearing in distinctness. 

There is a sense in which the revealings of 

2 39 



24O THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

God in the Bible are hidden. They are not 
hidden because God seeks to keep them from 
us, but because we must be brought into a 
certain condition before we can receive them. 
One said the other day, " Why did I never see 
the rich meaning of that psalm before ?" We 
had been going over one of the psalms together, 
as I sat at my friend's bedside, and we had seen 
many sweet things in some of the verses. My 
friend almost chided herself with dulness of 
vision, or with carelessness in reading, in not 
having seen the precious, meanings before. " I 
have read that psalm hundreds of times," she 
said. " These sweet thoughts were lying in 
the verses all the while, but I never saw them 
until now. Why was it ? Did God mean to 
hide them from me ? " 

The answer to these questions is that the 
revealings are made and the blessings bestowed 
really at the earliest possible moment. The 
stars are in the sky all day, but we cannot be- 
hold them until night comes. My friend could 
not have seen the precious thoughts in the 
psalm six months before. Then she was in 



HIDDEN WORDS IN THE BIBLE. 24 1 

health, active, swift in movement, strong, with 
no consciousness of weakness, rich in human 
hopes and expectations. And she found very 
many precious things then in the Bible. It had 
its lessons, its encouragements, its interpreta- 
tions. Just what she needed and craved in 
those active days the book had for her. But 
the particular revealings which she gets now 
from its words she did not then find. Now she 
needs comfort for weakness; strength to endure 
pain patiently; grace to enable her to readjust 
her life to its new conditions, assurance of di- 
vine love and care in her experience of feeble- 
ness. She did not need these special revealings 
in the time of health and activity, and they 
were not then available to her. 

The experience is a very common one. A 
happy young girl may sing sweetly the hymn, — 

" Jesus, lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly;" 

and yet it may mean almost nothing to her. 
She feels no need to flv to the divine bosom. 
She is conscious of no danger, of no enemy 



242 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

pursuing, of no storm gathering. The words 
ripple from her tongue in musical measure and 
tone, but there really is no experience in her 
heart to interpret them to her. A few years 
later she is a woman, with many cares, burdens, 
trials, and sorrows, and again she sings the 

song : — 

" Jesus, lover of my soul, 

Let me to thy bosom fly ; 
While the nearer waters roll, 

While the tempest still is high : 
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, 
Till the storm of life is past ; 
Safe into the haven guide, 
Oh, receive my soul at last." 

And now she feels every word as it drops from 
her lips in pleading accents. Every syllable is 
now a prayer from her heart. On the wings of 
her song her heart rises, — 

" As storm-tossed bird 
Beats with weary wing the air." 

What makes the song such a new song to her ? 
New experiences have come into her life, and 



HIDDEN WORDS IN THE BIBLE. 243 

amid these she has learned her own insuffi- 
ciency and her need of divine shelter, and has 
learned also of the preciousness of the refuge 
in the bosom of Christ. 

The same is true of very many divine com- 
forts. There are Bible texts which open to 
the young. They read the sacred book in the 
bright years when there is no care, no sense of 
weakness, no consciousness of need, and many 
of its words speak to them in thoughts of glad- 
ness and cheer. Meanwhile there are other 
words that read sweetly enough, yet over which 
they do not linger, out of which comes to their 
heart no soothing voice. Then they go on for 
a few years, and at length the way slopes into 
gloom. A child is sick, and the strong man is 
watching beside its bed, with heart burdened 
and anxious. Or he is brought down himself to 
a sick-bed, where he has time for thought. He 
knows his illness is serious, — that he may never 
recover. Now he is ready for some new Bible 
verses. He needs some of the comfort that 
thus far has been hidden from him in the words 
of God, whose deeper meaning he could not re- 



244 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

ceive until now. For example, there are the 
opening lines of the Forty-sixth Psalm : — 

"God is our refuge and strength, 
A very present help in trouble." 

He felt no need of a refuge in the sunny days, 
and never availed himself of it. Indeed, the 
door did not seem to open to him at all. But 
now in his weakness and fear he seeks a refuge, 
some place to hide ; and, coming upon this word 
of God, it opens at once to him, and he runs 
into it and finds warmth, shelter, love, safety, 
all within its gate. 

He had not felt the need of God's help and 
companionship when human friendship seemed 
so all-sufficient, and the word about "a very 
present help in trouble " had no personal mean- 
ing for him then ; now, however, the human 
friendships, sweet as they are, are inadequate, 
or they are far away. In this condition the as- 
surance that God is "a very present help" is 
a blessed revealing, and it is the opening to him 
of a new secret of blessing. When he knows 
this all the way of life seems lighted with a new 



HIDDEN WORDS IN THE BIBLE. 245 

and strange illumining. He fears no dangers, 
no trials, no battles, for with God for a very 
present help, he can never fail nor falter. 

It is thus that all the Bible words must be 
gotten. There are many precious promises for 
those who are tempted ; but until you are in the 
grip of temptation you cannot draw the bless- 
ing from the quiver which God binds on his 
tempted ones. There are tender and precious 
words for the widow; but while the beloved 
wife has her husband by her side, strong, brave 
and true, these words are yet closed storehouses 
to her. They can become hers only when she 
wears the badge of widowhood, and sits lonely 
by the coffin of her dead, or amid the cares and 
burdens which her bereavement has cast at 
her feet. There are sweet words for orphan 
children ; but while the children have both 
father and mother with them, and are dwell- 
ing in the shelter of a happy home, they can- 
not draw upon this reserve of divine goodness. 
Only when they have lost one or other or both 
parents can they quote such a Bible promise as 
this : — 



246 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

"When my father and my mother forsake me, 
Then the Lord will take me up." 

There are very loving promises, too, for the 
old ; but the man or woman in youth or mid-life 
cannot take them. There are beatitudes for 
certain conditions. " Blessed are they that 
mourn ; for they shall be comforted." But only 
those who are in sorrow can experience the 
blessedness of divine comfort. It never can be 
learned while the heart knows not grief. An- 
other beatitude is : " Blessed are they which do 
hunger and thirst after righteousness ; for they 
shall be filled.' y But there must first be hunger 
and thirst before there can be heart-filling. 

Thus all the Bible treasures are ready to open 
to us the moment we have the experience which 
the particular grace in them is intended to sup- 
ply. Hence it is that the Bible is never ex- 
hausted. Men read it over and over again, and 
each time they find something new in it, — new 
promises, new comforts, new revealings of love. 
The reason is, they are growing in experience, 
and every new experience develops new needs, 
and brings them to new revealings. 



HID BE IV WORDS IJY THE BIBLE. 247 

Another feature of this truth is that the re- 
vealings are made only as we enter upon the 
needs. The blessing for each day is locked up 
in the little circle of that day, and we cannot 
even get to it until we come to the place. But 
when the need comes, the supply is always 
ready. George MacDonald puts this truth in 
a sentence : " As you grow ready for it, some- 
where or other you will find what is needful for 
you, in a book or a friend." Nor is it mere 
chance that brings the supply, the help, the 
light, thus, just at the right moment. The 
hand of God guides all such chances. It is 
divine thoughtfulness that watches and always 
has the goodness ready at the instant of want. 
As the nature awakes, and its needs begin to 
express themselves in hungerings and cravings, 
God brings to us in his own way that which 
our newly awakened craving requires He 
watches us, and at the right moment has 
ready the blessing for the moment. 

Every new providence which opens before us 
has in its own little circle its own supply of 
goodness. Take, again, for illustration, the 



248 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

case of the young friend who was sick. She 
had never been ill before. When the sickness 
came on, the experience was altogether new 
and strange. At first it seemed mysterious to 
her, and she was alarmed ; but soon she began 
to realize that while the experience was new and 
painful, she was receiving new blessings, had 
come upon new revealings of God's goodness. 
For one thing, she had never before experi- 
enced such tenderness of love in her own home 
as now came to her from all her loved ones. 
The whole household life began to turn about 
her sick-room. The love was all there before 
in the hearts of father, mother, sister, brother, 
— they loved her no more than before; but in 
her happiness and health the love had never 
shown itself as it did now when she lay among 
the pillows, white and weak and suffering. 
Now each vied with all the others in the 
expression of kindly interest. 

Then, never had she known before that she 
had so many friends outside her home. There 
had always been kindness and courtesy, but 
now there seemed hundreds who wanted to 



HIDDEN WORDS IN THE BIBLE. 249 

show their love in some tender way. Still an- 
other new blessing that opened to her in her 
sickness was her Bible. She had always been 
a Bible reader, and the book had meant much 
to her in the bright, sunny days of life. But 
now she found precious love-thoughts, shining 
like diamonds, in words which had meant but 
little to her before. Nor was that all ; she 
found revealings of the love of God which she 
had never experienced in her days of strength. 
The friendship of Christ never before had 
seemed so close and real as it now became. 
Thus the providence of God which had brought 
her into a darkened sick-room, had brought her 
also to a new unfolding of divine goodness, to 
which she could not have come had not the ill- 
ness been experienced. 

So it is continually in life. The things we 
dread — the losses, the sorrows, the adversi- 
ties — bring us to new goodness and blessing 
which we should have missed if the painful 
trial had not come. Close beside the bitter 
fountain of Marah grew the tree that sweetened 
the waters. Hard by every sorrow waits the 



250 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER, 

comfort needed to alleviate it. Every loss has 
wrapped up in it some compensating gain. It 
is in human weakness that God's strength is 
made perfect. 

We may set it down as a principle, a law of 
Christ's kingdom, which has no exceptions, 
that for every new condition or experience in 
any Christian life, there is a special reserve of 
divine goodness, whose supply will adequately 
meet all the needs of the hour. We need 
never fear, therefore, that we shall be led to 
any place in which we cannot have grace to 
live sweetly and faithfully. " As thy days, so 
shall thy strength be," is the unfailing divine 
promise. But the grace is hidden in the need, 
and cannot be gotten in advance. The grace 
for sorrow cannot be given when we are in joy. 
The grace for dying we cannot get when we 
are in the midst of life's duties. And surely 
that is not the help we need then, but, rather, 
wisdom and strength to live nobly, lovingly, 
truly. Then when we approach death we shall 
be sustained and led through the valley into 
life. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

GETTING THE JOY OF CHRIST. 

" Take Joy home, 
And make a place in thy great heart for her, 
And give her time to grow, and cherish her ! 
Then will she come and often sing to thee 
When thou art working in the furrows ! ay, 
Or weeding in the sacred hours of dawn. 
It is a comely fashion to be glad — 
Joy is the grace we say to God." 

Jean Ingelow. 

The ideal life is one of joy. The face ought 
to be shining, — shining even in darkness. 
People say this is a sad world. Yes, for those 
who have eyes only for shadows. What we 
see is the imaging on the life around us of the 
colors of our own inner life. He who has the 
bird in his eye sees the bird in the bush. He 
who has songs in his heart hears songs wher- 
ever he goes. This is a sad world for the sad 
man. Darkness within finds only darkness 
without. But if one carries a lantern when he 

251 



252 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

goes out at night, one finds light wherever he 
goes. If one's face shines with an inner 
joy, one finds joy even in the deep night of 
sorrow. 

Christ said a great deal about desiring joy 
in his disciples. He put it both in sermon 
and in prayer. He said he had spoken to them 
certain things in order that they might have 
his joy in them. It is clear that joy was his 
ideal for Christian life. 

It is remarkable, too, that most of his words 
about joy were spoken the night before he 
died. This suggests that he meant his fol- 
lowers to have this joy, not only in their happy 
days, but when they were in sadness. It is 
evident, also, that it is not earthly gladness that 
he desires his friends to have, but a joy that 
dwells deep in the heart, — too deep for any 
earthly pain or sorrow to touch. 

Surely here is a secret worth learning. There 
are a thousand things in this world that tend to 
disturb or destroy human happiness. If there 
is a way to live beyond the reach of these 
things, to live a life calm, serene, rejoicing, 



GETTING THE JOY OF CHRIST 253 

victorious, songful, in the midst of sorrow, loss, 
struggle, pain, and wrong, we ought to know 
it. 

It is certain that we cannot get this joy by 
finding a place where the world's cares and 
hurts cannot reach us. There is no such place 
on this earth. No walls can shut out pain and 
trial. Christ did not ask that his disciples 
should be taken out of the world. They must 
live, as he did, in ordinary human conditions. 
The wind blows no more softly for you because 
you are God's child. Christ does not give us 
his joy by sheltering us from the things that 
might disturb the joy. 

Nor does he give it by so changing our 
nature that we shall not feel the griefs and 
pains of life. To do this he would have to rob 
our hearts of the very qualities in them that 
are noblest and divinest. Power to enjoy and 
to be happy would also be destroyed with the 
power to suffer; for our joys and pains grow 
on the same stalk. Rack, stocks, and prison- 
chains hurt the disciples no less because they 
had the love of Christ in them. 



254 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

We must get Christ's joy as he got it. One 
secret was his unbroken consciousness of his 
Father's love. When men hated him, when 
the world assaulted him, he fled to his Father, 
and found a refuge into which none could fol- 
low him, whose calm peace none could disturb. 
We, too, must keep ourselves in the love of God 
if we would find this joy. 

Absolute devotion to the divine will was 
another of the secrets of Christ's joy. He 
never did his own will. In this way only can 
we. find joy. "True, pure joy," says Amiel, 
" consists in the union of the individual will 
with the divine will, and in the faith that this 
supreme will is directed by love." 

Another secret of the joy of Christ was in his 
service and sacrifice of love. The angels see 
human joy on earth, not where men seek for 
happiness of their own, not where they are 
living to find their own good and pleasure, 
but where they are toiling and denying them- 
selves to give happiness to others. Christ's 
whole life was devoted to ministry for others, 
and every service of love yielded him joy. His 



GETTING THE JOY OF CHRIST. 255 

• 

death, too, was the voluntary giving of himself 
for others. There is a beautiful legend which 
gives us a glimpse of the joy which Christ 
found even in going to his cross. Father Ryan 
gives it thus, — 

" He walked beside the sea: he took his sandals off 
To bathe his weary feet in the pure, cool wave, — 
For he had walked across the desert sands 
All day long, — and as he bathed his feet, 
He murmured to himself, ' Three years ! Three years ! 
And then, poor feet, the cruel nails will come 
And make you bleed ; but that blood will lave 
All weary feet on all their thorny ways.' " 

The deepest joy of Christ's life must have 
been in his dying, for this was his greatest 
sacrifice and service. We get a glimmering of 
this experience in the word which says that 
"for the joy set before him he endured the 
cross, despising the shame;" and we have its 
foreshadowing in the prophetic assurance that 
he should see of the travail of his soul, and 
should be satisfied. We can get this joy of 
Christ only as we enter into his life of self- 
giving love. Selfishness yields no true glad- 



256 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

ness. Serving starts songs in the heart. If we 
would have the joy of Christ we must enter 
into the spirit of the life of Christ. He was 
in this world to bless and save it. We can 
share his joy only as we share his love for 
the world, and live to bless and help to save 
it. 

Another secret of the joy of Christ was in 
his always keeping his face toward the light. 
His look was ever upward. His eye was ever 
turned toward his Father and toward heaven. 
He saw only brightness. Many Christians 
need to learn this lesson. They look too much 
at the darkness of the world. They think of 
their sorrows, not of their joys. They let fear 
drive out courage and hope. If we would have 
Christ's joy we must train ourselves persist- 
ently — it is matter of training and habit 
largely — to look toward the light. There are 
flowers that keep their faces always turned 
toward the sun. That is the way we should 
learn to live. If we look ever toward the light, 
the light will enter into us and fill us with its 
own radiance. 



GETTING THE JOY OF CHRIST. 2 57 

In another of our Lord's words he tells us 
that Christian joy is transformed sorrow. He 
said to his disciples, " Your sorrow shall be 
turned into joy." He did not tell them that 
their sorrow should be taken away and joy 
given in its place, but that the sorrow itself 
should be turned into joy. When there has 
been a bereavement, he does not comfort by 
giving back the loved one. When there has 
been a disappointment, he does not undo it, 
and put into the life the dear thing that was 
wanted so much. The trouble is not removed, 
but it becomes a joy. This was fulfilled liter- 
ally in respect to the cross, whose utter black- 
ness became, later, the most glorious light the 
world has ever seen. 

The same transformation takes place in 
every sorrow of Christian faith ; it is turned 
into joy. In the depths of every dark thunder- 
cloud there is a rainbow hidden, which will 
break forth when the sun smites upon the 
cloud. And there is no trouble that comes to 
any Christian which has not, lying concealed 
within its folds, a divine blessing of joy, which 



258 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

will be revealed when the love of Christ shines 
upon it. You bow low in sorrow when death 
has touched a loved one of yours and the circle 
is broken. The loss seems irreparable. The 
grief appears too deep ever to receive comfort. 
But the Comforter comes, the consolations of 
divine love are given, and the sorrow is turned 
into joy. The sense of loss is not taken away. 
The friend is not given back. The keenness 
of the grief is not softened. But the love of 
Christ is revealed. The truth of immortal 
blessedness becomes a window through which 
faith's eye sees into the heavenly glory, behold- 
ing, not death, but radiant life. The will of 
God, that seemed to crush like a falling ava- 
lanche the heart's frail joys, appears now the 
very hand of love, blessing, and doing good. 
The sorrow becomes deep joy. 

In every life that has passed through such 
experiences and has kept its faith, the sweetest, 
richest joys are always transformed sorrows. 
The best things in any life are not things born 
of summer days, the things that come without 
cost or effort. One writes ; — - 



GETTING THE JOY OF CHRIST. 259 

4 * Joys that cost nothing give us little pleasure; 
We value most the things most hardly won. 
Men that delve deep to find earth's hidden treasure 
Would pass it by if open to the sun.' 1 

The things we prize most are not those we 
have gathered, as one plucks flowers on a sum- 
mer hillside, from the gardens of ease and 
worldly pleasure. They are things that have 
become ours through pain, struggle, self-denial, 
and tears. The lessons learned with greatest 
difficulty are the ones that are most to us in 
value and profit. Out of the hardest experi- 
ences of struggle and sacrifice we get the quali- 
ties that are the brightest ornaments of our 
character, and the noblest elements of our 
strength. The lenses through which now we 
see deepest into heaven once were salt tears. 
The treasures we hold now with firmest clasp 
once seemed marred things, unsightly, unlovely, 
things we shrank from receiving. The points 
in our past which now appear to have been 
fullest of outcome of good for our life, are 
those which at the time seemed God's strange 
ways with us. Christian joy is transformed 
sorrow. 



260 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

Another thing about this joy that Christ 
gives is that it cannot be taken away from us. 
Not dependent on earthly conditions, earthly 
accidents cannot reach it. Very much of our 
happiness others can take from us. They may 
rob us of our property. They may smite us 
with bodily wounding. We may lose out of 
our own life the things we love, the things 
which give us comfort and pleasure. But, if we 
are believers in Christ, we have an inner glad- 
ness which no one can touch. 

We can conceive of a strong fortress, in time 
of war, all of whose outer approaches may be 
assailed and despoiled, but within whose walls 
and gates there is a place of security which no 
enemy can enter, which no desolating hand of 
war can touch. There, if you were to pass 
within, you would find a quiet home, with 
music and pictures, with garden and flowers, 
with love and peace. Like this is the true 
Christian life. It has its unassailable fortress- 
Without in the world there are troubles and 
antagonisms, and the outer gladness may all be 
swept away ; but, within, there is a holy place 



GETTING THE JOY OF CHRIST 26 1 

of peace which nothing can invade. How that 
man is to be pitied who has no joy that others 
cannot take away, whose whole life, to its in- 
nermost stronghold, is open to the tread of 
alien feet ! It is dreadful to have no joys of 
which the world cannot rob us, to have all our 
happiness, the deepest and most sacred, within 
the reach of human or earthly despoiling. Yet 
there are many people of whom this is true. 
They have no inner sanctuary of life which is 
beyond the reach of intrusion, which no foot 
can invade, which no hand can desecrate. 
But if we are the friends of Christ, our 
heart's joy should be inviolable. Our property, 
our loved ones, our health, may be taken 
away, and all earthly sources of happiness de- 
spoiled ; but deep within, untouched and un- 
touchable, the joy of Christ should still and 
ever abide. 

This is the ideal Christian life. It is possible 
to every one, — the weakest, the most exposed, 
the most sorely troubled, — possible, but pos- 
sible only in Christ. There is no self-suffi- 
ciency in us which will give it to us. The 



262 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

dream of self-culture may be most radiant, but 
it is only a dream ; it never can be realized. 
All that self alone can build up may be de- 
stroyed. The fairy palace of self-sufficiency 
which one may pile up can be nothing more 
than a house built upon the sand, which the 
floods will sweep away. But when we have 
Christ in our heart, we have a life which no 
one can touch, whose joy lives on, sweet, 
calm, and serene, amid all earth's strifes and 
trials. 

This is the life every one should seek to live. 
We should not carry our joy where every 
earthly experience can destroy it, but only 
where it will be safe from whatsoever might 
quench it. It is impossible to estimate the 
power for good, in this sad, struggling life, of 
a bright, glad, shining face. 

"Of all the lights you carry in your face, 
Joy shines farthest out to sea." 

One of the best things any of us can do for 
this world is to show it ever a victorious life of 
joy, a face that shines even through tears, a 



GETTING THE JOY OF CHRIST 263 

beauty of the Lord which glows with radiance 
even in the night. That is the life the Master 
wants every follower of his to live ; and we can 
live it, too, if our life is truly hid with Christ in 
God. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE NEED OF THE AFTERLOOK. 

" And one can well afford to wait a season, 
Till all that is dark shall be made bright, 
If not with earthly, then with heavenly light, 
And we shall come at last to know the reason 
Of all the toil, the seeming loss, the pain." 

There are many things in this world which 
we cannot understand. At its furthest reach 
our human knowledge only skirts the outer- 
most edge of what is known to Omniscience. 
We soon realize this when we begin the study 
of any science. We learn a few facts, a few 
principles, pressing a little way into our sub- 
ject, and then we become aware that there is a 
vast region beyond us into which we cannot 
enter. The philosopher's illustration is always 
true, — at the best we are only children, stand- 
ing by the shore of a great sea, picking up 
here and there a brilliant shell or a polished 

264 



THE NEED OF THE AFTERLOOK. 26$ 

pebble, while the deep sea lies beyond our 
reach, filled with far more brilliant things than 
those we have found. 

This is not surprising when we consider our 
own finiteness and the narrow limitations of our 
powers, and the infinity of God, and the vast- 
ness of his universe. After we have studied 
the divine works and ways to the very utter- 
most of our power to understand, we can only 
say with Job, — 

" Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways, 
And how small a whisper do we hear of him ! 
But the thunder of his power who can understand ?" 

A great English preacher illustrates the lit- 
tleness, the fragmentariness, and the imperfect- 
ness of human knowledge of God's works, by 
the case of a fly crawling upon one of the pil- 
lars of St. Paul's Cathedral. What does the fly 
know of the architect's magnificent design in 
that great building ? It sees only the little 
space of stone on which it moves ; and the 
carving and the ornamental work appear to it 
like hills and mountains cutting off its progress 



266 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

and obscuring its view. So is the wisest man 
in the midst of the vast universe of God. He 
can see only for a little space about him. He 
can perceive but a little glimmer of the divine 
meaning in the things he sees. He can have 
but the dimmest, faintest conception of the 
wonderful plan of God which takes in all 
worlds, all human lives, and all ages. 

We cannot expect to know all God's 
thoughts ; we should have to be equal to him 
in wisdom to do this. A god whom we could 
fully understand, and in whose words and work- 
ings we should find no mystery, could not be 
God to us. We cannot expect to know God's 
design in the providences that touch human 
affairs and affect our own lives. We cannot 
trace the results of his acts through centuries 
to come, to know what the final outcome of 
them will be. We cannot tell what beautiful 
trees, with full, rich fruitage, will grow from 
the rough, dark seeds which to-day the Master 
plants in our life-garden. We cannot tell what 
blessing will come in the long future from the 
sorrow that now lays its heavy hand upon us. 



THE NEED OF THE AFTERLOOK. 267 

When we begin to read a tale written by 
some great author, we cannot tell from the 
opening chapters what the outcome of the 
story will be. Nor can we know what will be 
the last chapters of any story of providence 
beginning to-day in our life or in our home, 
perhaps in a way that seems dark and sad. 
For example, the first chapters of the story of 
Joseph's life appeared very hopeless. He was 
cruelly wronged by his brothers. He was torn 
away from his home. He was sold as a slave, 
and carried to a heathen country. There we 
soon find him in prison on false charges. Dark 
providences dimmed the opening morning of 
this young man's life. But we know how 
splendidly the story ends. So it has been in 
countless other life narratives. 

There is a story of a certain rabbi who en- 
tered a town and met a little maid carrying 
in her hand a basket which was closely covered. 
"Tell me, my good child," said the rabbi, "what 
you have in that basket." The child answered 
modestly, " If my mother had wished that any 
one should know the contents of this basket, 



268 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

she would not have covered it." God covers up 
many things from our eyes. Some of these he 
desires us to search out for ourselves. Men are 
continually thinking over God's thoughts, read- 
ing the lines of God's writing in his word and 
works* But there are many things in the 
realm of God's providence which we cannot 
know. The future is yet beyond our ken, and 
it is foolish and wrong for us to vex ourselves 
with trying to find out what it has in store. If 
God had meant us to know what the coming 
years have for us, he would not have covered 
them up as he has done. We know one thing, 
— that he in whose hands are the future events 
of our lives is good and loving, that he is our 
wisest and best Friend. Instead of knowing, 
we may trust. There is a secret of confidence 
in our Master's words, " What I do thou know- 
est not now." We know the character of him 
in whose hand are all the affairs of our lives. 
His name is love. We need never fear that 
what he does can be either mistaken or unkind. 
" What I do " written on any cup that is put to 
our lips ought to be assurance enough that 
there is a blessing in the cup for us. 



THE NEED OF THE AFTERLOOK. 269 

"I will say it over and over, this and every day: 
Whatsoever the Master orders, come what may, 
It is the Lord's appointment ; 

For only his love can see 
What is wisest, best, and right, 
What is truly good for me." 

But there is yet another word in our Master's 
saying which is a window of heaven, letting in 
bright light. " Thou knowest not now," he 
says. The emphatic "now" tells us that the 
veiling is but for a time. This is confirmed by 
the assurance which he hastens to give : " but 
thou shalt understand hereafter." There are 
many things in our lives that we cannot 
understand until hereafter. There are many 
things which cannot be made clear to us 
until we have larger knowledge of ourselves. 
Many of the mysteries of childhood are open as 
day to manhood. There are certain things that 
can be made known to us only at certain stages 
of personal experience. We cannot see the 
stars until night comes ; there are revealings 
of blessing which never can be ours until we 
enter life's shadows. Then there are things 



270 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

which cannot yet be understood because they 
are unfinished works. There are things that 
can be wrought out only slowly and through 
processes which require ofttimes long years of 
time. No artist will permit any one to judge 
of his picture while it is incomplete ; in the 
preliminary stages of his work it gives no 
true and adequate revealing of its final beauty. 
Many of the providences of our lives appear at 
first mysterious, because they are but the be- 
ginning of the outworking of thoughts of divine 
love. Some day when they are wrought out in 
completeness they will be beautiful and good, 
as are all God's finished works. " Thou shalt 
understand hereafter. 

Some of these dark things we may see made 
plain in this world. Jacob lived to understand 
the strange providence which took Joseph away 
from him. Joseph lived to understand what 
the Lord was doing with him in his youth 
when he allowed him to be so cruelly dealt 
with. The disciples of Christ lived to under- 
stand the dark enigma of their Master's life 
which so perplexed them, — the mystery of 



THE NEED OF THE AFTERLOOK. 2J\ 

the rejected, suffering, dying Messiah. Many 
people live to see in their after-years an out- 
come of beauty and blessing in experiences 
which, when they first entered them, appeared 
only dark and destructive. The old man sit- 
ting in the quiet of life's evening sees bright 
rainbows in the very bosom of the clouds now 
receding, which, when they were passing over 
his head, were black with tempest. 

One writes of two views of life ; first, of life 
as it appears to childhood, and then as it looks 
to old age. The child has not yet come up to 
the perplexities of human experience. 

14 Sweet face of childhood — 
Thou lookest out on life with trusting e) T es, 
Unknowing yet the awful mysteries 
Of sin and sorrow, want and grief and pain ; 
For thine is perfect innocence. 
Yet some day thou shalt know 7 the pain of life, 
And all its stern and hard realities. 
God shield thee when that searching day shall come ! " 

The old man has passed through all the 
mystery of life's trial, and sees now the finished 
work, the results of discipline, the gold purified 
and minted. 



272 THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

1 ' Sweet face of age — 

Thou lookest out on life full trustingly ; 

Yet thou hast known the darkest mysteries 

Which compass and ensnare the souls of men, 

For thou regardest all the woes of life 

As but the blows which call the statue forth 

From out the marble ; thou hast learned 

That fire consumes the dross, refines the gold ; 

And thou hast found at last behind it all 

Infinite love and wisdom infinite, 

Till now thou standest face to face with God." 

Thus, much of the mystery of providence 
becomes clear even in the present life. We 
have only to be patient and wait a little while 
to see the unveilings of the completed work, 
the coming to sweet and mellow ripeness of the 
fruit that seemed bitter at the first, the work- 
ing out in blessed beauty of the dark enigma 
of providence which so perplexed us. 

But there are other cases in which the ex- 
planation is not made in this world. Human 
life is too short for the finishing of all the work 
of divine love which begins in darkness. If 
life ended at the grave, we might not be able 
at all times to say that God is just and equal in 



THE NEED OF THE AFTERLOOK. 273 

his dealings with men. Some good people's 
lives seem to be all darkness and trial, with no 
explanation, no revealing of good. There are 
wrongs not righted here. There are good men 
misunderstood, maligned, misrepresented, bear- 
ing the odium of false accusation, suffering for 
the sins of others, and waiting all their years 
for vindication which comes not, at last dying 
with the shadow upon their name. If there 
were no life beyond death we could not always 
say that God's ways are equal. 

But life goes on, on the other side of the 
grave, and there will be time enough there for 
the fullest outworking of all earth's unfinished 
providences. All wrongs will there be righted 
and all perplexities solved. The shadows of 
injustice that have hung over good men in this 
world will vanish, and the names bearing re- 
proach here without cause will shine forth like 
the stars. "What I do thou knowest not now, 
but thou shalt understand hereafter." 



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